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Four minute homilies
Hosted by Joseph Pich · EN
Short Sunday homilies. Read by Peter James-Smith
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Corpus Christi
Jun 100:03:58Tap to summarizeCorpus Christi Today we are going to take Jesus to the streets. We are going to walk with him, to take a stroll with him, to accompany him around the streets of the church. And we are going to play music, use incense and bring him flowers. We wish to bring the flowers of our good deeds. During the day we gather little flowers that we find along the way and we manage to put together a nice bouquet. Little flowers that nobody notices, but not unnoticed for the gaze of a careful eye. We burn the incense of our good desires, which go up to the presence of the Almighty God, through the smoke that keeps climbing. And we play our best music, bringing our thoughts to him, expressing with the lyrics what we have in our hearts. On Holy Thursday we have also a Eucharistic procession inside the church, to the altar of repose. We accompany Jesus to the garden of olives, to his agony at Getsemane. It is a sad procession, with the apostles falling asleep, only Judas awake. Today we relive the mystery of Holy Thursday in the light of the resurrection, just a few days later. Then it was Via Crucis, the way of the Cross, through the streets of Jerusalem; today is Via Lucis, the way to the light, bright as the sun shines at midday. We couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist properly on Holy Thursday because Jesus was going to die for us. After his resurrection he went up to heaven but stayed with us in the tabernacle. And today we are congratulating him for his presence. We are grateful that he has decided to stay with us. It is a magnificent feast. It is like a king that goes out to meet his people. We play music, we sing songs, we rejoice in his presence. We accompany him with our best clothes, with our best wishes, and with our presence we acknowledge his kingship, his rule over us, and we are happy to be citizens of such a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of truth and life. We sing alleluia, hosanna, God save the king, may his kingdom last forever. It is going to last for eternity. We made a carpet of flowers for him to walk on softly. In Europe there is a long tradition of making carpets of flowers through the streets of the villages for today’s feast. Beautiful carpets, where people go to admire the amazing colours and forms before the procession. Every house makes its own, through the narrow streets, with a bit of competition, placing nice bunting on the balconies and decorating the windows. Also in the big cities they use magnificent monstrances carried by people, or pushed on wheels, with all sorts of precious stones, surrounded by silver and gold, crafted by the best jewelers. We carry him under the canopy, to cover his divinity, hidden behind a piece of bread, white as snow, concealed from our eyes without faith. Normally he hides inside the tabernacle, cold in winter, hot in summer. But today he wants to see the full light of the day, look into our souls, heal our wounded bodies, pierce our mortal flesh. From the vantage point of the monstrance, he can gaze above our heads, looking into our future, forgiving our sinful past. And like on his way to Calvary, we meet his mother, who is waiting on the foot path, while we are passing by, with a desire to have a glimpse of his countenance, this time full of joy, when she sees us walking with her son.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Holy Trinity
May 2500:04:19Tap to summarizeHoly Trinity We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe. We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.” We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs. We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him. There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.” The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Pentecost
May 1800:04:29Tap to summarizePentecost With Pentecost we come to the end of Easter. We have been preparing ourselves for a while to receive the Holy Spirit. Once a year we have the opportunity to get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity better, who Saint Josemaria calls the Great Unknown. He is still unknown and we would like to become closer to him. It is easy for us to see God as a Father. Easier to see God as a man when we look at Jesus as our brother. But it is not easy to see God as a dove, our spouse, who is Love. It is good to desire his coming. We should foster it. The more we desire something, the more God will give it to us. We can say Come Holy Spirit, Veni Sancti Spiritus. We desire his coming, his presence. The Greek philosophers talk about the four classical elements that constitute the universe: air, fire, water and earth. Three of them are representations of the Holy Spirit. We are the fourth one, the earth. We come from dust and we will become dust again. We are normally very earthy and we would like to become more spiritual. Original sin has made us more inclined to the earth. Our eyes normally look down more, rather than up. Material things are very important to us. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to transform us, to help us to become more spiritual. Air. On the day of Pentecost a strong wind shook the whole house. It was the sign of the Holy Spirit coming. But Holy Scripture normally represents the Holy Spirit as a soft breeze. We can feel it but we don’t see it. He prefers to pass unnoticed, to disappear, to be in the background, to work from within. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our soul. We need air to breathe; we don’t realise how important it is until we cannot breathe if we are under water. We need the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, for us to live a spiritual life. The bishop when he consecrates the holy oil during the Chrism Mass, breathes air into it. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe his holy air into our lungs, so that they become filled with his power, like the sails of a ship. We ask the Holy Spirit also to send a strong wind to remove all the dead leaves from our soul. Fire. On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire rested on the heads of the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. We ask for the same thing today: Burn us, Holy Spirit, purify us. We say with Saint Josemaria: “Remove that filthy crust of sensual corruption which covers my heart, so that I can feel and readily follow the touches of the Paraclete on my soul.” Like a log when the fire burns it, it transforms the wood into light and warmth. We too want to be transformed into love by the third person who is Love. We want to become glowing embers who look like rubies. Instead of becoming ashes, we want to become like God. Water is part of life. We cannot live without it. It is not as essential as air, but very close. Water quenches our thirst, washes our body and refreshes our spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does to us. But first we need to realise that we are thirsty, that our soul is dirty and we need his love. We need to approach that well of living water that Jesus promises the Samaritan woman, to collect that pure, fresh, transparent water, that leaps into eternal life. To fetch water from a well we require a bucket. No bucket, no water. The well is too deep. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to lend us his bucket to reach for God’s grace.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →The Ascension
May 1100:04:16Tap to summarizeThe Ascension Saint Bernardine of Siena tells the story of a young fellow who went to the Holy Land and tried to follow Jesus’ footsteps. He began in Nazareth, then Bethlehem, Cana of Galilee, Caparnaum and Jerusalem. He followed Jesus’ life from the beginning till the end. He arrived eventually to the place of the ascension. There is now a circular church that used to have an open roof to see the sky, with a rock in the middle, with the last footprints of Jesus before going up to heaven. Then he began to cry: “I followed you during all these months through all the places you have been and I have become much closer to you. Now where do I go?” He had a heart attack and died. He must have gone straight up to heaven. We are doing the same. Every year we follow Jesus through his life, death and resurrection, like a cycle, every year a bit closer, and eventually one day we will jump up to heaven. Today it is a sad day. Our Lord is going up to heaven and he is leaving us behind. Why? We are not ready. We still have few things to do. Our mission is not finished. We would like to go with him, but first he is going to check the place he has prepared for us. And he is going to come back and take us to himself. But nevertheless we will miss him, his face, his speach, his affection, everything about him. The more we love him, the more we miss him. It is very human. Imagine how the apostles felt after three years with him. That’s why we are never completely happy here. We are created for heaven, to be with Jesus. Today is a day where we can fix our eyes on heaven, like the apostles. Today we foster our desires for heaven. But why did he have to go? Could not have he stayed both with us and go to heaven? He is God, he could have done it. He could have stayed in one place, in Jerusalem, Rome, or our home town. But then we would have had only five minutes in our life time to talk to him. 7 billion people is a lot of people to go through. Instead he did something better. He stayed with us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle, in a piece of bread, for us to eat him, for us to come to see him and spend time with him. He is here waiting for us, 24/7. There is a vigil lamp telling us that he is here. What’s a tabernacle? A box into which we place God. In Hebrew it means a tent, a dwelling place. The tabernacle is normally the centre of the church, where we try to give Jesus our best. But Jesus wants to go back with his Father God. We understand this. His glorious body deserves the glory of heaven. Hopefully one day we too will have a glorious body like Jesus. Saint Ambrose says that God came down from heaven and a man went up. Before we knew Jesus as man; today we see Jesus as God. Our faith grows looking at his divinity. Saint Bernard talks about the three steps of Jesus coming down: incarnation, crucifixion and death; and three steps going up: resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father. We too would like to be with God for ever. Everything is possible in heaven. Today Jesus is flying up to heaven. When Jesus performed his miracles, he tried not to show off, to make them as natural as possible, not to draw attention to himself. Even when he multiplied the loaves and the fish, he just blessed them and began to distribute them; he didn’t act like a magician. But today he is doing something special. Till now he has appeared and disappeared. Today he wants his apostles to know that he is leaving definitely. That’s why he is flying away. If you want to, if you are quick, you could go up with him. But I prefer to stay with Mary, our Mother. josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Sixth Sunday of Easter The Will of God
May 400:03:47Tap to summarizeThe Will of God Today we hear in the Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How much do I love God? How much am I ready to do anything for him? It is as simple as that. Love is not feelings but uniting our will to the will of God. Marriage is to become one, in body and soul, in will and spirit. You love somebody when you are ready to do his or her will. When two people marry, they give themselves to the other person in a way that they don’t belong to themselves anymore. From then on they need to think what the other person wants them to do. The problem is when one or both don’t give themselves completely to the other, when they keep a single attitude. They end up living two separate lives. Our union with God, says Saint John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union. The more we unite ourselves to God’s will, the more we become him, until we reach a moment when there is only one will, His. God has given us a free will to be able to love him. Love cannot be compulsory. People complain about evil in the world, why God allows bad things to happen. It is because he has made us free. He has run the risk and the adventure of our freedom. In marriage there is normally an infatuation at the beginning, when you are attracted to a person and you fall in love. But afterwards marital love requires an act of the will: I love this person because I want to, because he or she is my spouse, independently of my feelings. Sometimes we feel it, many times we don’t feel it, and other times maybe we feel the opposite. Imagine you have two workers. One is a hard worker, but he does his own thing. The other is a bit lazy, but he does what you want him to do. Which one do you prefer? The one who does your will; the other is useless. It is the same with God. We can be very busy but doing our own thing. Saint Augustine has a beautiful expression: bene curris sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. God prefers that we follow his will, rather than spend the whole day in church. God has designed the path he wants us to follow. It is there to be walked. Do you remember those old drawings in the magazines, where all you had to do was to draw the line between the dots? Then a nice figure appeared. The Holy Spirit has punched the dots. All we need to do is unite the dots every day, just the dot in front of us, without knowing what thedrawing is going to look like. You cannot see what you are doing looking forward; you can onlysee it looking backwards. The only way to see what the figure looks like is from the air, from above, from an eagle or a drone view, through God’s eyes. What’s important is the attitude we have in front of God’s will. It is easy to follow him when his will is the same as ours. It is harder when there are two different wills, his will and our will. There are different stages in conforming our will to his will. We start with resignation, a negative word; we move to desire to love his will; once we manage to accept his will, we begin to love it. And we end up abandoning ourselves in his hands. Like a baby is left in his mother’s arms. A baby doesn’t have a will. It is a pure instinct of letting himself be loved.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Fifth Sunday of Easter Way, Truth and life
Apr 2700:04:05Tap to summarizeWay, Truth and Life Jesus was telling his disciples: I have to go and prepare a place for you, then I’ll come back and take you to myself; and you know the way. Thomas, a down to earth man, complained: Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way? Thanks to Thomas’ logic, we have these beautiful words from Our Lord: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is the one, he is a must, we cannot bypass him, he is compulsory. He should be our center, our summit, our soul, our love, our soulmate, our everything. A good question to ask ourselves: What is the place of Jesus in my life? When you look at a photo of a group of people, you can identify the relationship between each of them, depending where every person is placed in the photo. The one in the middle is normally the most important one. If I take a photo of important people in my life, Where do I place Jesus? At the back? Or maybe our photo is just a selfie. Saint Augustine says that the way leads us to the truth, and the truth to life. Jesus is the way, the only way. There are as many different paths, as there are people, but only one way. Our life can go only in one direction. If we want to reach heaven, we need to follow Jesus. We come from God and we go back to God. We are here only for few years, wandering around, like a shooting star in the middle of the sky, that comes and goes. We were created without our consent; but it is up to us to reach our final destination. There is a famous saying in the spiritual life: God who created without you, won’t save you without you. It is so easy to get lost. We see it all around us. So many people losing their way. There are many things in our lives that are trying to pull us away from the path, to distract us, to bog us down, to turn us around. This is one of the reasons why Jesus came to earth: to lead us, to show us the way. He is a short cut, the direct line, the straight path, a free way. He is our true GPS. We trust our gadgets to lead us where we want to go, but sometimes they let us down: our battery is flat, we run out of data, or we go through a spot where there is no coverage. But we don’t trust Jesus, the only real GPS, who never fails, the only one who can get us to our most important destination in life, heaven. If we look for him, he will find us, and once we find him, we will have no other freedom than to love him. We won’t let him go. We’ll keep our eyes on him and we won’t get lost. If we follow the way, we will find the truth. Jesus always leads us to the truth. Sometimes we don’t follow the way because we cannot handle the truth. We don’t like what the truth is going to reveal to us, what the truth brings about. We live in a relativistic society that doesn’t care much about the truth. People fashion the truth according to what they think or how they live. Either you change the way you live according to what you believe, or you change your beliefs. This is the problem with the truth: it is going to have an influence on our lives. It is hard, but it will make us free. It will free us from the things we are attached to, from the things we are enslaved by, from the things we would like to be free of. The truth will make us free. That’s why the truth lead us to life. Once we live according to the truth of our nature, we will begin to live an authentic Christian life, and we are happy because that’s what God created us for. If we live the life God has prepared for us, we are in our way to heaven.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Fourth Sunday of Easter The Good Shepherd
Apr 2000:03:35Tap to summarizeThe Good Shepherd Every fourth Sunday of Easter we have the Gospel of the good shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads his flock to good pastures, who knows his sheep one by one and calls us by our name. It gives us a lot of confidence to know that we have a great shepherd to lead us to heaven. All we need to do is to follow him. The early Christians loved this depiction of Jesus. In fact the oldest image we have of Jesus is a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders, in the catacomb of Saint Calixtus, in Rome. Have you ever tried to carry a sheep on yours shoulders? It is not easy. We also call Jesus the Lamb of God. In every Mass the priest shows us the host saying: Behold the Lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. In the Old Testament the Jews used to offer animals as sacrifices to God. Now they are not needed anymore, because Jesus gave his life for us once and for all. We Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we try to be like him, sheep and shepherd. To be a shepherd means to give your life for the sheep. It is nice to be the boss, but it demands sacrifice, responsibility to forget about yourself, to do the best for others; in one word, to lay down your life for them. It means not to have your own life. We cannot be the hired shepherd, who doesn’t know his flock, who doesn’t care about his sheep; shepherds who only think about themselves, who are there just for profit, who don’t know how to serve. Service is a beautiful word that has almost disappeared from the dictionary. We talk about rights, but we forget about responsibilities. We don’t like to talk about duties. We are also sheep, a good one, who follows the whistles of the shepherd. Not the lost sheep of the parable. It is easy to get lost. We like wandering around, playing with fire, doing our own thing, following the inspirations of our pride and selfishness. And when we are lost, then we complain. We want the freedom of doing whatever we want, and when we are in trouble we ask for help. Jesus tells us to be a sheep, not a wolf. Sometimes we prefer to be a wolf, fighting with everyone, biting whoever comes our way, barking all the time. A wolf is more exciting, but a sheep is a gentle, peaceful, smiling animal. It doesn’t complain and lets you do whatever you want. It is a big difference between to kill a sheep and a pig. A sheep dies without complaining; a pig doesn’t go down without waking the whole neighbourhood. There are two kinds of people: people who create problems and people who solve them. A mother is always helping. Spoiled kids are always creating trouble. We call this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. Today we pray for vocations, asking Our Lord to send us good shepherds. We are fulfilling Jesus advice: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We pray that the Lord will send us shepherds, specially from our own parish. Jesus knows that we need vocations. All we need to do is pray for them. josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Third Sunday of Easter Emmaus
Apr 1400:04:36Tap to summarizeEmmaus The road to Emmaus resembles our own journey. We are pilgrims. We can identify ourselves with these two disciples, who went back to their village, after Jesus’ death. It was all over. In fact, we only know the name of one of them, Cleophas; we can easily be the other one. We had placed our desires and ideals on that man whom we thought was the Messiah. We followed him for three years, expecting him to save Israel from the Romans. And they killed him; the most horrible death on the cross. We saw him dying and we are going back to our former life, all hope lost; we tried for a while, but it didn’t work out. We are going away from Jerusalem, away from God, the wrong way, against the traffic. You see sometimes on freeways a big red sign: wrong way; go back. Go back to your God. Jesus comes out to meet us. He runs up to us, and he is walking with us, next to us, on our right hand side. But because of our discouragement, our self centredness, we don’t recognise him. A question, I’ve been thinking about: Are we sad because we don’t see, or because we are sad, we don’t see? I think normally sadness comes from blindness. It happens to us many times, when we fail to discover Jesus who is passing by our lives. He is passing by every day. He could have come with his glorified body, showing us his five wounds, but he came as traveler, as a pilgrim, like each one of us. He is a man. He comes to meet us in our journey. God comes down to our level, to follow us and to seek us out. We expect him to come with special effects, fire works, beautiful music and big miracles. And he passes by unnoticed, through the normal circumstances of our lives. Saint Teresa of Avila used to say that God is among the cooking pots. And Jesus begins to walk and talk with us. He listens to what we have in our hearts, to our discouragement, to our lack of hope. And he begins to explain to us what the Scriptures had to say about him. He give us the other side of the story. He always has good news to share with us. And we need to listen to what Jesus has to say, specially when we are down. Jesus gives us an example of how to help people we come across in our lives. We run up to them, we meet them at their own level, we accompany them on their journey, listen to what they have to say, what they have in their hearts, share their emotions, understand their problems, and speak to them of what is in our hearts. We don’t need to impose our ideas or our opinions onto them. Just open our hearts to them, explain to them our own life journey. We take them with us to Emmaus, through our words, our affection, our example, and introduce them to Jesus. When the two disciples of Emmaus arrived in their village, they asked Jesus to stay with them: stay with us because it is getting dark. We need to say the same to Jesus: stay with us because without you there is no light, without you there is no hope. You are our way, the truth and the life. Sitting at the table they recognise him at the breaking of the bread. It took them a long time to recognise him. The breaking of the bread was the beginning of the meal. Jesus broke the bread in a particular way. This was the name the early Christians used for the Eucharist: the breaking of the bread. It is a good question for us: Do we recognise Jesus at the Holy Mass? Do we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle waiting for us? We see bread but it is Jesus. We need more faith. When they recognised him, he disappeared. It happens to us: Jesus comes and goes. We need to keep searching. The Gospel says: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?” They realised then of the warmth of walking with Jesus. We can get used to him, to the security of our faith, to the trusjosephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Second Sunday of Easter Thomas
Apr 600:03:42Tap to summarizeThomas When Jesus came to meet the apostles after the resurrection Thomas was not there. Where was he? We don’t know. Did he go shopping? Did he go fishing? Maybe he was still running away. All we know is that he wasn’t there. We need to be there when Jesus comes. No excuses. We cannot miss our Lord. We need Him. He comes when he likes and we need to be ready, waiting. When Thomas came back the apostles told him, with a hint of jealousy: “Who do you think came while you were running around?” He didn’t know. They told him: “We have seen the Lord!” This is our Christian message, a great act of faith, witness to his resurrection. He couldn’t believe it. When they insisted, he became upset and proud, and he denied it: “Impossible!” And he declared more angrily: “I want not only to see his wounds, but to touch them and put my fingers in them.” Fair enough; we recognise the risen Christ through his wounds, but his statement was a bit too much. Thomas is a modern man, sceptical and empirical: “Unless I see and touch, I don’t believe.” Thanks to his unbelief our faith grows. The doubting Thomas increases our faith. Today, eight days later, Thomas was there when Jesus appeared again. This time Thomas had learned the lesson and he is there. The first thing Jesus says is: “Peace be with you!” Be at peace. I have risen, it is all over, I have overcome death, be not afraid. The same angels say when they appear to men. These were the first words Saint John Paul II said when he was elected Pope: “Be not afraid!” We are afraid and angry because we are not at peace with ourselves. When Thomas saw Jesus, he hid straight away behind the other apostles thinking: I hope he didn’t hear the silly thing I said the other day. He was ashamed now, all his arrogance gone. But Jesus hears everything; we cannot hide anything from him. He went directly to Thomas, walking through the people around him. He took his right hand, and, even though Thomas tried to resist, with the strong force of his glorious body, Jesus placed Thomas’s hand into his wounds saying: “Do not be faithless but believing.” Thomas could only say: “My Lord and my God!” A good act of faith in front of the Eucharist. Then Jesus praised all of us when we feel our lack of faith, and we are envious of Thomas: “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet believe.” When Jesus left, Thomas kept staring at his hand. Tradition says that his hand became red, a reminder of his lack of faith. Thomas never forgot this encounter with Our Lord, the first one of a line of saints to find refuge in Jesus’ wounds. Later on, Thomas would had shown his hand to the early Christians, when they asked him about this scene, showing off with pride and a bit of arrogance: I am the only one who touched Jesus’ wounds. It is not completely true because the holy women anointed them with oil, when they buried Jesus’ body. When I read this Gospel, I would like to ask Thomas what he felt when he put his fingers into Jesus’ side. You could say that he felt the depth of Jesus’ love for him.josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →Easter Sunday
Apr 300:03:52Tap to summarizeEaster Sunday Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on Sunday morning and found it empty. She was the first one to discover the empty tomb. It is very important for us the empty tomb. It shows that Jesus rose from the dead. It is empty because Jesus overcame death. It is an icon of the resurrection. Mary ran back and told Peter and John about the tomb. Both ran to the tomb to check it out. Saint John arrived first; he was younger and ran faster. Saint Jerome says that celibacy gives us wings. But he did not go in, out of deference for Peter. Peter was already regarded as the leader of the apostles. The Gospel says that John “saw and believed.” What did he see? It is a traditional question. He saw the linen on the ground. John knew Jesus so well that he realised Jesus had risen. He was there on Friday night when they laid him in the tomb. And looking at how things were now around the tomb, he could figure out that Jesus walked away by himself. You can go to a room in your house and say: “I know who’s been here. I know what has happened.” The dirty dishes are in the sink, her clothes are all over the room, he’s been in the pantry because the chocolate has disappeared. The Jews accused the apostles of stealing Jesus’ body. The Gospel says that the linen clothes were “lying there.” This expression in the Greek version seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose, as if he had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled. One can understand how this would amaze a witness, how unforgettable the scene would be. If you steal a body, you take it with its clothes; you don’t leave the linen behind. The napkin which had been wrapped around his head was “rolled up in a place by itself.” The napkin was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. It was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container or a cocoon, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments. Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk. Jesus rose from his death and left the linen there, untouched, sliding out of them. This remind us of the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. It is supposed to be the linen Peter and John found on the floor of the empty tomb. It has always attracted veneration. John Paul II said that “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day. He went to see the Holy Shroud and said: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. This is our deepest human desire: to see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration. Happy Easter to you all. josephpich@gmail.com
Transcribe →