Third Sunday of Easter B
Saint
Augustine lived long, long ago and far, far away—
dying
in northern Africa all the way back in the year 430—
but
this important bishop and teacher
once
gave an Eastertide sermon on the gospel passage we’ve just heard,
the
message of which is still quite important for us today.
To
help us better understand the point he’s making,
I
want to start with a little demonstration…
- Can I have two volunteers, please?
- Can I have two volunteers, please?
- Hold
up this sheet.
- show head only: can’t see my body…but can
presume it’s there
- What
if I told you I was scratching my belly?
- What
if I told you I was standing on one foot?
- You’d
have to take my word for it, right?
- show
body only: can’t see my head…but can presume it’s there
- What if I told you I dyed
my hair? or shaved it all off?
- Again:
you’d have to take my word for it.
And
one more important point before we get to that ancient sermon…
We
often speak of the Church as the Body
of Christ—
not
his physical Body, but his mystical Body:
Christ
is the Head, we are his members,
and
the two are closely united,
just
as much as my own head is attached to my body.
So
with all this in mind, let’s listen to what Saint Augustine had to say:
Now we too find ourselves in
a situation
not unlike [that of the disciples in the gospel]:
while they could see
something not visible to us.
We can see the Church
extending throughout the world today,
something that was withheld
from them,
but Christ, who in his human
body was perceptible to them,
cannot be seen by us.
And just as they, seeing his
human flesh,
were enabled to believe in
his mystical body,
so now we, seeing his
mystical body,
Just as the sight of the
risen Christ
helped the disciples to
believe in the Church that was to follow,
so the spectacle of that
same Church
helps to confirm our faith
in the resurrection of Christ.
The faith of the disciples
was made complete, and so is ours:
theirs by the sight of the
head,
ours by the sight of the
body.
But to them and to us alike
the whole Christ is revealed,
though neither to them nor
to us
has it yet been granted to
see him in his entirety.
For while they could see the
head alone with their physical eyes
and the body only with the
eyes of faith,
we can see only the body and
have to take the head on trust.
Nevertheless, Christ is
absent from no one;
he is wholly present in all
of us,
even though he still waits
for his body to be completed.
[ Sermon CXVI ]
You
see, the risen Jesus came to his disciples
and
showed them his wounded hands and feet to make it clear:
he’s
the same God-made-man
who
had been crucified just a few days before.
for a piece of fish
and
ate it right there before their eyes
to help them understand
not
only was he flesh and bone—no ghost!—
but
that he was picking right up
where he left off:
again
sharing a meal with them,
as so often before.
All
of that is rather remarkable to us
who
cannot see or touch him for ourselves!
But
the promise Jesus makes to those disciples—
that
what was now beginning in Jerusalem
would
extend to all the nations
and
reach the very ends of the earth—
that
had to be nearly impossible for them
to grasp.
There
weren’t very many disciples—
even
fewer, in fact, than there had been before.
And
it was painfully obvious from what had happened to Jesus:
the
authorities were rather hostile to the gospel message.
How
could this movement possibly grow?
Was
there any reasonable chance
that
what Jesus had started would endure?
They
had a clear view of the Head,
but
were unsure about the full extent of his Body.
Nearly
2,000 years later,
there
are 2.1 billion Christians in the world—
more
than half of them Catholics—
comprising
a third of the world’s population.
Here,
on the other side of the planet from the land where Jesus walked,
you
can find churches built in his honor all over the place.
We
can see for ourselves: it’s just as Jesus promised!
And
yet…ours is an age of growing doubts.
Did Jesus really exist in
the first place?
If so, did he rise from the
dead?
Was Jesus divine, or was he deluded?
Is there any God at all?
Today,
while the reach of his Body is quite evident,
we
have our questions about the nature of its Head.
It’s
good for us to recall that before he was a saint,
Augustine
was no goody-two-shoes.
Actually,
he was the quintessential wild child.
His
immoral lifestyle
kept his pious mother constantly in tears
and
on her knees praying earnestly for his conversion.
He
was an ideal candidate
for that repentance and for that forgiveness
which
we hear so much about
in the scriptures this Sunday.
Saint
Augustine arrived on the scene
a few centuries too late to
meet Jesus in the flesh,
but
he came to know the person
and the power of the risen Christ
through
his contact with the Church:
through
the wise preaching of her leaders;
through
the moving beauty of her worship;
through
the steadfast virtue of her faithful.
And
that contact changed his life forever!
It’s
because Augustine could see and hear and touch Jesus
in
the learning, the liturgy, and the life of the Church
that
he accepted baptism as a Christian (387 AD),
and
was later ordained as a priest (391 AD).
He
encountered the living Body,
and
so came to believe—to trust—in its divine Head.
How
are we doing when it comes to making Jesus visible today?
Granted,
some of us may have questions—even serious ones—
about
the state of the Church as a whole.
But
Christ’s mystical Body is formed
by
countless individual members.
That’s
where we have to start: with you and me.
As
Peter so boldly proclaimed to the people:
Christ is alive! Christ is with us still!
But
would anybody know it by walking into this church right now?
Or
if they ran into us later this afternoon?
Or
if they spoke with us at work or at school tomorrow?
We each
have a duty to bear witness:
to
let the Lord’s hidden face be revealed in and through us
by
sharing what we’ve seen, what we’ve learned,
what
we’ve experienced ourselves.
There
is no part of the body so small or seemingly unimportant
that
it can’t lead another to Christ, our Head.
It
was in the breaking of the bread
that
Jesus was made known to his disciples
on
that first Easter Sunday,
and
it’s still in the breaking of the bread
that
the Church most undoubtedly meets her Lord today.
In the
Holy Eucharist, Head and members are united as one.
May
the great sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood
help
us to see the Lord’s face,
and
help others to do likewise.
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