From 3 Sunday of Easter, homilies and reflexions will cease being published on this blog and will be published on the parish blog. You can read them by clicking on this link.

Yesterday evening two adults and one baby were baptized and became part of God’s Catholic Church. The two adults were also confirmed and received the Body and Blood of the Lord for the first time. It was a wonderful celebration for this community. And it was being repeated in parishes throughout the world. Those of us who were baptized Catholic as babies may wonder why people would choose to do this, but it is wonderful that they do so. It testifies perhaps not to the impeccable holiness of Christians, but to the beauty of the Risen Lord who dwells in his Church.
In the Gospel we hear of the disciples standing bewildered before the empty tomb. They are not quite sure what to make of it all. We can be the same. What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean? Yesterday’s celebration of the sacraments speaks of what it means for it is the Risen Lord who baptizes, the Risen Lord who gives us his Spirit, it is the Risen Lord who nourishes with his body and blood. We rise with the Risen Lord. Through these gifts we share in the new life of the Resurrection. Through these sacraments the Risen Lord becomes the beating heart which lies at the centre of our lives – filling us with the grace and victory of his Resurrection. Every Mass takes us into the centre of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Every time he feeds us with his body and blood, his life flows through us. And the Sacraments are a promise of a new creation, that God will make all things new.
We are witnesses to this. The death and resurrection of Christ is the centre of our lives. We are called every day to die to self, to sin, to self-centredness, that we might rise every day to a Christ- and other-centre life. Through our baptism and through our Sunday Eucharist we bear the deaths of the Lord in our lives, bodies and hearts that we might bear the Resurrection of the Lord in the same. Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead! Alleluia!

In a short while we shall be baptising K, L, and A. K, L and A the readings today lead to you! In a short while you will be washed in the waters of baptism. You will be anointed with the Spirit in Confirmation and then you will receive the Body and Blood of the Lord in Holy Communion. It may seem a long way, a different world from the narratives of the Old Testament and even from the New Testament proclamation of the Resurrection, but tonight these readings lead to your sharing in the life of God in his Catholic Church.
The readings are the story of God’s faithful love shown to people’s of different times and places, but they also help us understand what we celebrate today as we proclaim Jesus Christ our Lord is Risen from the dead.
The first reading from Genesis isn’t about a specific event, but about the meaning of existence. The world is not random; it is intended and is sustained at every moment by the loving will of God. And in Jesus we see the meaning of creation – everything was created so that God could raise it up to share in his glory. Jesus lies at the centre of creation.
I have always liked the story of Abraham and Isaac; it speaks to me of faith. Apparently some parents find the story horrifying. In the end Isaac is not sacrificed. God provides in his own way for the offering. The story prefigures the coming of Christ – the lamb God provides for the sacrifice. Christ is the Lamb who takes away our sins and those of the whole world. He gives of himself totally to us – even accepting our violent response in crucifying him – and in his Resurrection he triumphs over evil, sin and death.
You will cross over in the waters of baptism. As the people of the Old Testament passed through the Red Sea to the land of freedom, you will pass over, but not to some physical land. You will pass over from sin and death through the waters of baptism to new life with God.
In his dying we die to sins, in his resurrection we rise to new life. And we do this not in isolation, but as members of his body, the Church. It is through the Church, especially through the Sacraments, that the new life of the Risen Lord flows through us.
So rejoice with us as we rejoice with you. We can be like the disciples in the Gospel seeing the empty tomb, but struggling with what it all means. In your baptisms we see something of the meaning of the Resurrection. It is the Risen Lord who will baptize you, it is Christ who will give you his Spirit in Confirmation, it is Christ who will feed you with himself. And one day it is the Risen Christ whom we shall rise to greet when he will come to make all things new. Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead and we rise with him. Alleluia!

This day is good because of God’s act in Jesus Christ, because God’s plan is fulfilled in the death of the Lord as Jesus himself bears witness in his last words on the Cross, ‘It is completed.’ The impression one gets from John’s Passion Narrative is that it is not Pilate who is in charge – he seems quite weak; it is not the Jewish leaders who are in charge; indeed to get Jesus crucified they are willing to deny their faith, the faith they will soon celebrate with their Passover meal – ‘we have no king except Caesar’ they cry. It is the Father who sent his Son and the Son who comes in the Father’s name who ultimately shapes the outcome. He shapes the outcome not by force, but by love, faithfulness and total self-giving.
And why does God do this? He does it out of a love for us which is beyond our imagining. «God acts vulnerably to do what could only be done in vulnerability, with enormous, risk and pain.» «God acts to do what only he could do. A healed world is birthed out of wretchedness. The Son takes our world’s wretchedness into himself, takes our wretchedness into himself, and changes the world, changes us, towards wholeness.» It is Jesus’ sacrifice of himself in love and service which makes him our High Priest, the one who makes holy and whole our world.
Today we break routine. We fast, we pray, we watch in gratitude and wonder that God loved us so much that he sent his only Son, he sent his Son holding nothing back to make our broken world new. We hold up the Cross of victory, our victory over sin and death, a victory come about by Jesus’ gift of himself unto death. We hold up the Cross because God’s Son hung on the Cross, because God hung on the Cross and made it a royal banner. And we worship, not just here with our lips, but with our lives. We bend the knee before the Cross – we bend our stubborn hearts and wills before the Cross, with God’s grace and help, we relinquish our pride, we give our hearts of stone to be broken before the Cross. We are reborn in the death of the Lord on the Cross and we submit ourselves to the Cross every day allowing it to shapes our lives and decisions. Every Sunday at every Mass we come to take to receive his Body broken for us, his blood poured out for us, we give ourselves again to the Cross of Christ because it is the one hope for our broken lives, for the broken world; if we think that we can fill our lives with other things we fool ourselves. «If anyone would be a follower of mine let him renounce himself everyday and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who loves his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that one will save it.»

The Stations of the Cross were celebrated on the oval this year. Here is a link to the reflexions.

This evening we celebrate the graciousness of God who gives us a new way of looking at ourselves, of defining ourselves. We are not defined by our own initiatives, we are not self-made men and women; this evening we proclaim that we are defined by the gracious act of God in Jesus Christ, we are defined by the death of the Lord as service and gift.
In the first reading we read of a ritual which continues to be celebrated annually by devout Jews. Each year they gather for the Passover meal, but this is not just a family occasion; they come to re-enact the defining moment of their lives, a moment given them by God when he took their part and discomfited the powers that enslaved them. They enact it because their lives were given them in this act of salvation, their lives are lived in response to the God’s faithful action in the past, in response to God’s present action, and in anticipation of his marvellous deeds.
The Lord’s Supper is our Passover. But the food for our meal is not a lamb without blemish, but the Lamb without blemish, Jesus Christ, God’s Son. It is his service unto death which sets us free from sin and death. St Paul, in the second reading, is writing to a community riven by divisions and he admonishes them, he reminds them that at every celebration of the Eucharist they proclaim an act of self-giving service even unto death: ‘every time you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes in glory’. Their life is given them by the service of the Lord. Our lives are given us by the service of the Lord. Jesus’ washing of his disciples feet reveals the meaning of his life and his death. He comes as one who serves. His disciples are to be people who serve.
Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist we proclaim that we are not self-made people, but that we are people made, born in the death of the Lord. We take his body broken for us into our bodies, we drink his blood poured out for us into our veins. Our bodies are bodies for others, our lives are lives for others, given in service to the weak and poor every day. That is our new identity given us in the death of the Lord. And it is only in sharing in a death like his that we shall share in a resurrection like his.

Today’s Gospel is an extraordinary one. In some senses it starts our quite ordinarily - the religious leaders are trying to trap Jesus again. They are asking him if they should stone an adulteress to death as the Law prescribes, but which they have no right to do under Roman law. So you see the trap - if he follows the Law he will be telling them to defy the Romans; if he tells them to abide by Roman Law, he will be unpopular with the mob. The mob - that crowd of people motivated by anger and fear with little logic or reason to guide it. It takes a second to form, causes damage and disperses having caught up ordinary citizens in its ugliness. The woman - she is of no account to the religious leaders - she may die or not, but they are focussed on Jesus.
Jesus does not allow himself to be swept up in events or to be a tool of others. He pauses, breaks the momentum of the mob and then eventually he speaks. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Then he returns to doodling. The moment passes the crowd is gone and Jesus can focus on the wretched woman. ‘Has no one found you guilty?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Neither do I. Go repair the damage you have done to your marriage and to your life.’
Jesus is the mercy of God made flesh giving birth to the new in our lives.
We can come to him - and know that he sees into our hearts, he loves us and he will not turn his back on us.
The mob may howl. He is focussed on the person, the sinner and he shows us that God’s justice, therefore the greater justice is not to condemn, but to forgive and allow the fallen to make a new start. ‘See I am doing something new’ the Lord says in the first reading. ‘I am doing something new’ in Christ, something new in the lives of his disciples, something new every day.
Next time the press or television try to whip up mob justice, we can follow the Lord’s example and pause. Next time we think that there is no hope for someone or for ourselves, we can pause.
God’s mercy is eternal, ever new. It is the only hope for ourselves and for our broken world. May we experience it for ourselves. May it be enfleshed in us and in our actions.