May 2003
Homily for Third Sunday of Easter - B
May 4, 2003
“Touch me and see...”
The reason Jesus invited his friends to touch him was simple:
he wanted them to know that he had risen from the dead,
and that he was not some illusion, some ghost, some figment
of their imagination.
This was no “virtual Jesus!” He was not a hologram.
He wanted them to know that he was real.
“Touch me and see,” he said...
The faith of our church tradition has been a
“touch me and see” affair since Jesus rose
from the dead.
The first thing we do when we enter a church is to reach out and touch
holy water,
and then to touch ourselves with that water, in the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
Walking into church we find a place and then we touch one knee to the ground,
recognizing that here, we are in the presence of the Lord, in
a particular and sacramental way.
Many of us will then kneel in the pew, and guess what? “touch”
the sign of the cross on
ourselves again.
And what do we do when our prayer together begins?
One more time! “In the name of the Father...”
So, average Catholics have traced their bodies with the sign of the cross
THREE times
before the opening prayer of the Mass.
Before the gospel we touch our forehead, mouth and breast
praying that the Gospel will touch our minds, our words
and our hearts.
We touch each other with the sign of peace.
We touch the very presence of the Risen Jesus in the eucharist
by receiving the bread of life and the cup of salvation
into our hands, and into
our bodies.
Baptism is all about touching.
We use a thumb to trace the sign of the cross on the baby’s
forehead.
We immerse the baby in water, letting the touch of grace surround the
child’s body.
We anoint the baby with sweet smelling chrism.
We dress the naked baby in baptismal clothes.
We sprinkle, we touch the people in the assembly
with the waters of the baptismal font.
Relics, smudging foreheads on Ash Wednesday,
the laying on of hands, anointings,
a bride and groom joining their right hands, and placing rings
on each other’s fingers...
Wearing medals and crosses that touch our skin...
Ours is faith of touching, because ours is a sacramental church;
and ours is a sacramental church because at the heart of who we are as church
is the Risen Jesus who invites us to touch him, and see...
At the heart of our faith is a Risen Jesus who wants to touch us,
and who wants us to draw near enough to touch him,
Jesus, who wants us to touch each other with tenderness, and healing, and
consolation;
Jesus who wants us to touch our neighbors, to support them, to lift them up,
to hold them;
Jesus who wants us to touch especially those whom others deem untouchable;
Jesus who wants us to touch his presence in all the wonders of nature and
the universe;
Jesus who wants us to touch his beating heart, pulsing in everything that
is good, true,
whole and pure.
9:30 Mass
People love to hold, to cuddle, to touch babies.
Today we celebrate how God’s love reaches out to touch these two children
with grace and love...
11:30 Mass
Today, the Lord will touch our first communion children
in a special way...
Rev. Austin Fleming
May 18, 2003
Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter - B
Even people, like me, who don’t know much about art
are able to identify at least some famous paintings.
I know Whistler’s Mother when I see her profile.
I recognize DaVinci’s Last Supper, and I know Mona Lisa’s smile.
Most of us are familiar with a particular portion of Michelangelo’s rendering
of Creation
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
You know: that place in the fresco where a finger of the hand of God
reaches out and touches a finger of the hand of Adam.
Today’s gospel image of the vine and the branches has something to do
with those two
fingers meeting.
Have you ever been in a place where, even though you were surrounded by people,
you felt all alone because you did not know or recognize anyone around
you?
And in such circumstances, have you enjoyed that moment when finally
your eyes landed on a familiar face?
Today’s gospel image of the vine and the branches has something to do
with those experiences.
In his novel, Howard's’ End, E.M. Forster writes what are probably
his two most famous words:
"ONLY CONNECT!
That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments
no longer. Only connect...”
And “connecting” has everything to do with the image of the vine
and the branches in today’s gospel.
We all know, don’t we, the difference between feeling connected and unconnected.
There is something in the human person that makes us long to be connected
and leaves us in fear of being un-connected or, even worse, dis-connected.
Perhaps it is our first human experience that nurtures in us this desire
to be connected.
Think of the intimate connection of a mother and the child growing in her womb.
There is a connectedness here more intimate even than the union of the
man and woman
whose joining brought this child to be.
Our lives begin connected to the life of our mothers. And once we leave the
womb,
we spend the rest of our lives seeking to connect, and to connect intimately,
lest we perish disconnected and alone.
We want to hold someone close.
We want to be held. We
want to be with.
We want to be near. We want to be close to...
We want to connect.
And we do this in our families, in the society of the larger community,
and in relationship with friends, partners, lovers, spouses.
Only connect!
It is precisely at this depth in our hearts and lives that God desires to connect
with us.
And, it is precisely at this depth in our hearts and lives that we desire
to connect with God.
As St. Augustine put it:
“Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest
in you...”
That is to say: there is a desire for connectedness in our
hearts
that can only be satisfied by our growing closer to
God
from whom all life flows, and in whom all things
find meaning,
and through whom all things are - connected.
This connection with God in no way replaces or supplants
our relationships, our love for, our connectedness with
friends and lovers.
Indeed, all our relationships with each other are precisely intended
to point us TOWARDS our relationship with God,
for GOD IS LOVE,
and those who abide in LOVE abide in GOD, and
God in THEM.
The church community is a community of connectedness.
We gather as church to connect and to collect our individual prayers into
a chorus of prayer and support.
We gather as church to celebrate the eucharist,
the sacrament of connection in which the Lord makes of our bodies
a home for his life,
even as a children make of their mother’s wombs a home for
the fragile beginning of their life.
We share the eucharist in order to celebrate and strengthen the connection
the Lord is among us:
for we, the church, are his body; he is the vine and
we are the branches...
Our high school graduates have, for 17 or 18 years, been growing on the
vine of their families,
their friends, their schools, their community and their parish.
And now some significant “pruning” of the vine is about to take
place.
They will be graduates, not students, at their high school.
They will still be our sons and daughters, but most of them will be transplanted
from the vine at
home to dormitories and apartments at school or near work.
They will begin to allow their own branches to entwine with other vines.
They will need, on their own, to learn what needs to be pruned,
cut out of their lives, in order for them to grow strong.
They will, in brand new ways, begin to seek connections with new places, new
people,
new friends, and with God.
Our prayer for them is that they keep their connections with the vines that
have nourished them
in these early years of their lives.
And in a special way, we pray that they will remain connected to the vine that
Jesus is
in the lives of us all.
Wherever you go to study or to work, however far away you might move
from Concord,
there will be a community of faith nearby you, waiting to connect with you
and waiting for you to connect with them.
We pray that you will only connect!
Connect the past and the present. Connect the visible with the hidden.
Connect with all that is good, true and beautiful. Connect the dots!
Connect with all the ways that God and the church reach out
to connect with you.
And when you come home, connect with us, here at Our Lady’s.
Your place on the vine of this parish will always be here for you.
Connect with our prayer and song, and most important: connect with
us at this table
where the Lord connects us all and makes us one.
Rev. Austin Fleming
