Today we gather in the place where the shadow of the Cross has touched the good people of Annunciation Parish. We pray for them and their shepherd in the face of such tragedy, our dear friend Archbishop Hebda.
Thanks to Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, I came to be associated with your marvelous community thirty-two years ago when you were still in your infancy. What a joy and privilege to gather now for your 40th anniversary. I have so many fond memories of the arrival of your men in Fall River, Massachusetts, with Fr. Michael Carvill, Fr. Vincent, and Fr. Luca, and of course with Fr. Jose Medina, principal of the Cristo Rey School in Boston, and Fr. Paolo at Sacred Heart and the men at Fenwick High. One of my greatest joys was ordaining your men at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls where the missionaries of Charles Borromeo were ordained at the tomb of the greatest missionary of all time, St. Paul.
I wish to express my gratitude to Don Massimo and all the members of your community. Forty is an auspicious number in the Scriptures which in addition to its numerical meaning has a deeper significance. Forty days and forty years indicated a time of testing and a time of intense preparation. In the story of Noah, it rained for forty days and forty nights which prefigured baptism. Moses was with Yahweh on Mt. Sinai for forty days before bringing forth the tablets of the law. Israel wandered in the desert for forty years as a purification and preparation to enter the promised land. Jesus’ forty days in the desert was a reprise of that and has given us the season of Lent, only to be followed by the forty days of Easter. Your 40 year history is a preface of the good things to come in the Lord’s loving providence.
Your magnificent motto, inspired by the words of Don Giussani is “Passio Christi Gloria”. It is an apt description of your charism. Your ministry and witness help people realize and experience the inner longing for meaning, for the encounter and the presence that explains everything. My favorite words of Don Giussani are where he says, “He who does not give God does not give enough”. So often we are content to give a loaf of bread or a blanket and forget that people need the Bread of Life and the Mantle of Grace to find meaning, fulfillment, and salvation. Pope Francis has reminded us that our mission is not to be an NGO, but to bring people the Light of Christ, to give people God.
The Cross is not a sign of defeat and death but a manifestation of selfless love that should fill us with hope.
It is fitting that the Priestly Fraternity of Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo was born of the Exaltation of the life-giving Cross forty years ago. The Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is a very special one for me. I chose this same Mass for my installation as Archbishop of Boston. It was at a moment of great crisis. It was a scene that resembled the fall of Saigon. I was accompanied from the Archbishop’s Residence to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross by twenty-five police cars and a helicopter. We arrived at the Cathedral and were confronted by a huge tumult of hostile press and angry demonstrators. The Police Chief told me I should not go in the front door. I explained to him that going in through the front door was an important part of the ceremony of the installation of a Bishop. I knocked on the door with the crosier with the screaming demonstrators at my back. The door opened and the Rector stepped forward with the Cross. I was dazed so he said in a stage whisper “Kiss the Cross”. Inside the Church, I felt embraced by the faith filled people gathered there. We listened to the same readings we heard in today’s Mass, and I preached on the refrain from the psalm, “He who sows in tears reaps rejoicing.”
These readings have a powerful message for us as we gather for this anniversary celebration.
I was a finicky eater as a child. I hated spinach, unlike Popeye in the cartoons. I had a dog named Blacky who sat at my feet. I would feed him my spinach surreptitiously. He was a healthy dog, what with all those veggies. When I went to the seminary, I traded Irish cuisine for German food. They say the shortest book in the world is the Irish Cookbook, but the German Cookbook is not much longer. Lots of Sauerkraut and sausages.
We were warned not to complain about the food, like the Israelites in the Book of Numbers, documented in today’s first reading. They were punished by invasion of seraph serpents. A good reason to refrain from complaining about the food.
Because St. Patrick was not there to drive out the snakes, another remedy was provided in answer to Moses’ prayers. The Lord said to Moses; “Make a seraph of bronze and mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.” For God, nothing is improvised. Just as the manna speaks to us prophetically of the Eucharist, bread from heaven, the bronze serpent mounted on the pole prefigures our divine Savior on the life-giving Cross.
We know of this because of today’s Gospel passage where Nicodemus the Pharisee, a closet Christian, is meeting with Jesus clandestinely under the cover of darkness. Jesus told Nicodemus, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” At that moment poor Nicodemus had no idea what Jesus was talking about, but he realized it was important because of what Jesus said afterwards: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but might have eternal life.”
The lights went on for Nicodemus on Good Friday when he and his buddy, Joseph of Arimathea, followed Jesus on the Via Sacra, the Way of the Cross, all the way to Calvary. There Nicodemus saw with his own eyes the Son of Man lifted up like the bronze serpent on the pole.
As the Israelites bitten by the poisonous snakes looked up at the bronze serpent and were cured, so the fearful Pharisee Nicodemus looked up and saw Jesus lifted on the Cross is cured of his doubts and fears, and boldly asks Pilate for Jesus’ body so that he and Joseph of Arimathea could give Jesus a decent burial. His secret discipleship gives way to a public declaration of his allegiance to Christ. If it had not been for the conversion of those Pharisees who looked at the Cross, Jesus’ body may have been thrown in a common ditch or devoured by jackals and birds of prey. The twelve Apostles, with the exception of the young John, did not see the Son of Man lifted up, as they were hiding out in the witness protection program.
In the story of Nicodemus, we see the power of the Cross for those who really see the Cross. St. Francis called the Cross his greatest book where he found the greatest love story in the history of the world.
Kierkegaard was raised in Lutheran Denmark where their Protestant sensibilities had led them to eliminate crucifixes and replace them with the cross. Once as a boy the young Kierkegaard came upon a painting of the Crucifixion and was completely shaken by the depictions of the suffering of Christ which caused a powerful religious experience that led to a deep conversion in Kierkegaard’s life.
In the Vida of St. Teresa of Avila, the saint speaks of her conversion being triggered by seeing an Ecce Homo image that portrayed Jesus being scourged and crowned with thorns. That moment becomes her second calling, and the mediocre religious sister was transformed by grace into a great mystic, cured of her mediocrity and worldliness.
If the sight of the Cross converted Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea it also converted Dismas the thief. The sons of Zebedee wanted the thrones at the left and right of the Christ. Those thrones were occupied by thieves. St. Augustine in one of his sermons about the disciples on the road to Emmaus says the two disciples lost hope. They said, “We had hoped that Jesus would be the Messiah, the Liberator.” Augustine calls on the Good Thief to teach the disciples to have hope, for the Good Thief looked at the bleeding crucified Christ and prayed; “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
The Cross is not a sign of defeat and death but a manifestation of selfless love that should fill us with hope so that the words and sentiments of the hope-filled Dismas may be ours, that we many not flee from the Cross like the disciples in Emmaus, but that we might see Christ lifted on high and be healed of our sinfulness and mediocrity.
Jesus invites all of us, His disciples: Take up your cross and follow me. So often we are like Simon Peter. When Jesus spoke to him about the Cross, Peter objected and urged Jesus not to even talk about the Cross. Jesus rebukes Peter harshly: “Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter cut off the servant’s ear with his machete, but when he saw the well-armed soldiers, he decided to flee. It is curious, despite his fear, that Peter still wanted to follow Jesus stealthfully. Peter tries to follow Jesus at a safe distance. This is not discipleship. It doesn’t work. Peter is recognized. His accent gives him away and Peter, who swore he would never deny Jesus, denies his Master three times, and not to a soldier with a long spear, but to a waitress with an attitude.
In experiencing the Fatherhood of God through Christ, we discover our sonship and the fraternity that unites us to one another.
We cannot follow Jesus at a safe distance. We can only really follow up close, where we shall be splashed by the mud and by the blood. The fear of the Cross makes us mediocre and prevents us from truly following Jesus with the costly grace of discipleship.
By His stripes we are healed. Jesus did not suffer so that we would never have to suffer. He suffered to save us and to allow our suffering to have meaning. St. Paul writes, “For the doctrine of the Cross is foolishness to those who perish, but to those who are saved it is the power of God.” Paul preaches the crucified Christ – “to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness…but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men…”(1 Cor. 1:23-25)
Today we celebrate the power of the Cross. One of my predecessors was Cardinal O’Connell whose Titular Church in Rome was San Clemente, which is one of the most important ancient churches in Rome. There is a stunning mosaic of the Cross seen as the tree of life with streams flowing from beneath it, bringing life and sustenance to various beings, including deer, human beings, and birds. A deer drinks from the stream and vines are watered.
On the Cross are twelve doves symbolizing the Apostles who will fly from the Cross to carry the good news of Christ’s victory to the Ends of the Earth. The Missionaries of Charles Borromeo are like those doves, charged with the New Evangelization and carrying the Good News to the ends of the earth.
I always loved the preaching of the Seven Last Words. Once the Archbishop asked Lorenzo Albacete if he would be willing to give the reflection on one of the Words. Lorenzo said, “Which one?”. The Archbishop said, “I would like you to preach on ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”. Lorenzo answered, “Good, I don’t have to prepare.”
To me, it is telling that the first and last words begin with “Father”: “Father forgive them.” “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.”
Jesus calls God “Father” more than 100 times in the Gospel of John and 65 times in the Synoptic Gospels. And Jesus even calls God, “Abba”, a title that betokens affection and trust.
Jesus has come to reveal the merciful face of the Father, so beautifully described in the parable of the prodigal son. In Don Massimo’s writings about the spiritual fatherhood of the priest, he states that we must first be sons, so that we can be fathers.
The present Archbishop of Assisi has been so good to the friars. He gave the friars the Church of Maria Maggiore in Assisi, which is the place of the Santuario della Spogliazione. That is where Francis’ father, who had rejected his vocation, put him on trial before the Bishop. His father disowned him, but Francis returned his fine clothes and said from now on I shall say: “Our Father who art in heaven.” Francis knew he was not an orphan; his insight into the Paternity of God allowed him to understand the call to follow the poor and crucified Christ and to be a universal brother.
The second reading is the beautiful paleo-Christian hymn that St. Paul incorporates into his epistle. It describes the Spogliazione di Cristo, the kenosis of Christ who embraces the Cross and places His life in total obedience in the hands of the Father.
Your charism is to live your faith in terms of relationships and encounter. As sons of our Father, you empty yourselves trustingly in obedience. You are joined to Christ, who empties Himself taking on the form of a slave. Jesus does this for the love of the Father and for the love of us. And in experiencing the Fatherhood of God through Christ, we discover our sonship and the fraternity that unites us to one another. Before this Christ who has taken on the form of a crucified slave, “let every knee bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.” And we pray in the words of St. Francis of Assisi: We adore thee O Christ and we bless thee because by thy Holy Cross thou has redeemed the world. The last 40 years have been an intense preparation for the next chapter, which we all anticipate with gratitude and enthusiasm and with Wonder.
