Kent Beausoleil, S.J.

Homily – Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 29, 2009)

Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

Those who know me know I have a love for cooking (and as you can also tell I have a great love for eating). That love for cooking was taught to me and given to me when I was a boy by both of my parent’s who loved to cook and who taught myself and all my sisters and brothers the rudimentary skills of cooking – patiently teaching us how to chop, peel, grate, saute, and so forth. I recall many a moment, when, over a hot stove my mother taught me how to discern the signs of when meat was properly cooked, when a sauce was just thick enough, when cakes, pies, and cookies were properly done. Later on in my life I found myself working in restaurants as a sous-chef being apprenticed by other cooks who refined my cooking skills, yelled at me and barked orders (yes chef’s can be temperamental artistes – as those of you who watch ‘Top Chef’ or ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ know). Yet their external guidance, and the external guidance of my mother and father, wrote on my heart a love and a passion for cooking and baking, a love that I came to own, a love that I had faith in. The more I practiced the art of cooking, the more the skills and desires for cooking became part of me. Those skills became second nature. And so now, every time that I cook, I recall those mentors, I recall my parent’s, my family, and feel their love alive within me, so much so that in cooking for other people, I am not only sharing my love but their love as well.

And aren’t so much of the good things of life like that. With sadly the end of Xavier’s basketball season fresh on everyone’s mind, I cannot help and think of the players, or the players of any sport, and how through years of practice and drilling, of coaches and mentors teaching the fundamentals of the game, how the player grows and learns. The come to know intimately through successes and failures, joys and sufferings, the game that they are playing. They learn of the love for the sport and the sacrifice it takes to excel. Each player finds through the drills, through the logistics of the game, and through the skill-sets practiced year after year that these become written on their heart, become part of them, so that on that court or playing field, we fans glory as we watch their joy and passion in the effortlessness of it all as players and the game they play become one. The same holds true for anything that gives meaning to life: actors and their craft, musicians and their art, even here in this academic institution, student’s growing through love of learning as they find their future life’s vocation within the subject matter they are majoring in, and yes, even here in this space, in Bellarmine chapel, as we the people of God find life through our faith. Throughout the long life of salvation history – from the time of Abraham and Moses, to the giving of the Law, and the establishment of the covenant of love between God and God’s people – through trial and error, joys and setbacks, we have been learning about the passion of faith, the undeniable fact that we have a God whose love for us never dies.

Yet, if there is anything that Hebrew Scripture can reveal about us as God’s children, it is the fact that we can be a hard-hearted unbelieving people regarding this fact. God sends us priests, prophets and kings, sends us messengers who extol this message of God’s undying love. God gives us mentors in the faith and gives us preachers and teachers. God woos us with words of comfort, assures us with words of strength, and reaches out to rescue and save us by converting our hearts away from the worst part of our human nature, our capacity for destruction and violence, by urging us to love and to act with mercy and justice. And yet, we still, at times, struggle to believe. And so Jeremiah, speaking as the prophet of God, sees all of this but knows that something new and exciting is happening to the people that God loves. God, through Jeremiah, speaks of this new covenant, (new not in the sense that there is a radically different message). No the fundamental message remains the same – God’s love and life are still bound up in us. God is one with creation. God is, in imagery so beautiful and touching, still married to us. What’s new is, that like so many of the other good things about life, after all that mentoring, after all those external experiences of God’s love in our life, after all the stories of that love that have been shared, after all the preaching and teaching, after all the witnessing of the wonders of God revealed and patiently and loving taught to us, that the love of God has and is finally written on our hearts, has become part of us as we believe, has been fused into our being. "And no longer shall they, each of them, teach their neighbor and kin, (of my love for them) for they shall all know me.

But really isn’t that the beauty of Jesus Christ, for his life is that new covenant. He is the full revelation of God’s love alive in us. He is the preacher, teacher, healer, savior, and covenant fulfillment that is written on our hearts as divine love personified. He embodies and reveals this love not because he lords it over us, nor because, as our reading this evening from Hebrews attests he was gifted as the anointed one by some divine right, some exaltation of who he is, some birthright and legacy, nor give power solely because he is the God human. No, he reveals that love of God, as the Letter from Hebrews exclaims, in his flesh, in who he is. He reveals that love of God that has become written on our heart because he is God – God who became one of us, lived with us, suffered with us, suffered for us, healed us, died and rose so that we may have life and life to the full. He learned love through what he suffered and by God’s taking on our human condition in Jesus, our God shows us yet again the depth of what this new covenant means for all humanity.

We initially learn the truth of God’s love revealed in Christ Jesus, like so many good things, from the outside: from our parent’s and family, from sisters, fathers and brothers, from coming to Church, and from preacher’s and teachers. Yet, there comes a time when we know of God’s mercy, of Christ’s love, of the Holy Spirit presence, because it becomes written on our hearts – it finds home within us. So then if we wish to see Jesus, as we hear Phillip’s words from our Gospel echo in our hearts, if we wish to see God’s love revealed, to glory in that Spirit’s presence, then where must we search? Well, a good place I think to start perhaps is to look deeply within others—any other, every other and there we will see Jesus. Jesus is alive in the heart of our communion, our community, as we, together, love as God does, bringing compassion, healing, mercy and justice – in our making that love live and allowing that love to remain among us. Jesus is alive then in the body of our community. Secondly, if we want to see Jesus we need to look within our very selves. Jesus is alive within us, within our body.

At this moment the living Christ, the Lord who died for you and rose for you, the risen Christ is alive in you. Don't just take my word for it; listen to Jesus in our gospel today, listen to the love present there. Jesus’ proclaims that his glorification is his laying down his life so that we might have life, for as God glorifies the Son, the son glorifies us, honors us, lives in us, and remains in love with us forever. This voice of love, of our own eternal glorification, has come for us and lives in us. Truly this voice of love has come for no other reason but for our sake.

Finally, on top of Christ alive in the body of community and alive in our own body, we see Christ alive in word and sacrament, alive in the body and blood, that we share every time we gather here as a Eucharistic community. We find God’s love alive in every part of Christ’s great mingling of his humanity and divinity, that we share at this our common table – and which very soon we will welcome once again by taking that same risen Jesus Christ into our very flesh. We indeed connect up with this Jesus and see the love of God in Christ written on our hearts, alive in our own bodies, in the body of community, and in the body of our communion, and this is indeed Eucharist, indeed something for which we give thanks.

We encounter Christ in all things. Christ is alive, and our own spiritual journeys attests to it, our worship here this evening attests to it, our compassionate care and concern for one another attests to it. As Christ is lifted up on the cross of his passion, his life connects up with the crosses of all our live’s journeys, makes our own lives holy and worthy of redemption, worthy of rescue, worthy to be saved and this is truly the bone and marrow of our Christian faith. It is the thrilling mystery of God’s grace. This covenant of God’s love is truly written on our hearts, it is not just some ‘thing’ — but simply the fundamental truth of our faith, the truth that divinity and humanity, creator, and we the created, find ourselves intimately and forever fused together in love.

Peace,