Homily for Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord

The Stunning Lessons of The Resurrection

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord 

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, March 31, 2024

The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the be-all and end-all of the Christian faith. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, the pope, all bishops, priests, religious men, religious women, Christian ministers should go home and get themselves involved in something else. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, all the Christian faithful should leave their churches immediately and church buildings should be turned into something else like city halls, auditoriums or department stores. Now, before you frown at what I have just said, listen to what the great Apostle Paul himself said, “If Christ has not been raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testify against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise…” (I Corinthians 15:14-15). Speaking further, St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins…we the most pitiable people of all.”

More to it, if Jesus was not raised from death, Christianity is a fraud and a joke taken too far. But if he did rise from death, then Christianity is the fullness of God’s revelation, and Jesus must be the absolute center of our lives. There is no third option. There is no sitting on the fence. It is of no good trying to explain away the Resurrection or to rationalize it as a myth, a symbol or a legend. The stubborn fact is that Jesus Christ is Risen. He rose! The tomb is empty. Death could not hold him. 

As we celebrate this unprecedented event, permit me to share with you some of the priceless and enduring lessons of Easter. 

1. The first enduring message of Easter is that God is up to something greater than we had imagined. So, we don’t have to live as if death were our master. We can, in fact, begin to see this world as a place of formation, growing and maturing towards something greater, something more permanent, more stable, more reliable, more beautiful and splendid.  
2. Second, Easter highlights the triumph of truth, justice and sacrificial love; it promises the ultimate victory of good over evil. Easter teaches that injustice will never win. Wickedness will never win. Lies and deceit will never win. Hatred will never win. In the final analysis, evil will never win. In the here and now, it might seem evil is winning. It might seem that corrupt people are having their way. It might seem that those who mock Jesus and deride religion are winning. But when all is said and done, they will end up losers. They will be on the losing end. Where are those who executed Jesus now? Where are the Pharisees, the scribes and the elders of the people? Where is Pontus Pilate now? The reason why they are even remembered is because of Jesus. Don’t give up hope. Now, it might seem might is right. It might seem the end justifies the means. It might seem there is no objective truth— you have your truth, I have my truth, everyone has his or her own truth. There is actually nothing like the truth. Now, it might seem appealing, it might appear smart to simply deny the existence of God. But in the final analysis, truth will win. Easter tells me that what is wrong will never ever win. So, always stay with the truth, and we know that Jesus is the truth. 
3. Third, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus tells us we have an Advocate in heaven. In fact, the path of salvation has been opened to everyone. Jesus went all the way down, journeying into excruciating pain, despair, abandonment, betrayal and even godforsakenness. He went as far as we can go away from the Father. In light of the Resurrection, the first Christians realized that even as we run as fast as we can away from the Father, we are running into the arms of the Son. Anyone who is running away from God, who is moving into godforsakenness, is running into the arms of Jesus who went all the way down even to godforsakenness. No matter where you are in your spiritual life— up, down, down and out, you can always encounter the Risen Lord.   

Good Friday Homily

Behold The Wood Of The Cross

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Good Friday Homily

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Friday, March 29, 2024

The Persians are credited with inventing crucifixion between 300-400 BC. The Romans only perfected it for 500 years until it was abolished by Constantine I in the 4th century AD. At the time, the condemned person was meant to carry the cross beam and not the whole cross to the place of crucifixion. They were stripped naked, which was part of the torture and humiliation of the cross. In Romans times, crucifixion was applied mostly to slaves. It was a form of capital punishment where the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross, beam or stake and left to hang until death. There is archaeological evidence of the giant Roman nails that were used. Once the person is nailed to the cross, the excruciating pain “ex cruce” (pain from the cross, which is the worst kind of pain commences. Because as the crucified person labor to breathe, he would rock up and down on the crucified hands and feet. This would go on for hours or for days in some cases. And when the person died, the body was typically left to the elements and to the wild animals. As you already know, Jesus was crucified in a very public place near the city walls so that people coming and going would see him.

But the great question that has been asked up and down the centuries is why in the world do we gather every Good Friday and look intently at that moment when this horrific event happened? If people from the ancient world, using a time machine could see us here in a religious place gazing at a crucified person, they would think we have lost our minds. The answer is not far-fetched. From the lips of Jesus we hear, “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” (John 3:14). The reference is to that story in the Book of the Numbers where the people of Israel are bitten by seraph serpents and many are dying. When Moses approached God and begged for mercy, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole and lift it up so that those who were bitten and look at it, they will be healed. Many centuries later, Jesus declared that he, the Son of Man, must be lifted up so that we who look at him are healed. 

Those who have wrestled with fear and anxieties and have been to counseling or therapy sessions or spiritual direction know that the answer to their problem is never found in denying it or repressing it or running away from it. It is rather in looking at them, and confronting them. In the Buddhist spiritual tradition, there is a phrase that says, “invite your fears to tea.” The phrase is a metaphor for acknowledging and confronting your fears. It is a way of facing your fears head-on and learning to deal with them in a healthy way. By looking at them, by not running away from them, you disempower them. On every Good Friday, we are invited to look at the cross of Jesus. As you intently look at it, what do you see? Everything that frightens us— physical suffering, bodily pain, dissolution of the body, humiliation, false accusation, the consequences of cruelty and hatred and institutional injustice and then death itself. We see in the cross everything that frightens us, everything that angers us and everything we try to keep at bay. As we behold the cross with rapt attention, not only is there this kind of psychological liberation in looking at our fears, we see the God who has accompanied us all the way down. In his Letter to the Philippians, St. Paul says, though he (Jesus) was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8). Look at it this way: The Son of God in all his glory came all the way down into our humiliation, into our physical suffering, into our fear of death etc. God came all the way down. That shows that even in our worst fears, we are accompanied by divine love. 

Rome used the cross as an instrument of terror. Rome maintained its power and dominance by terrifying the world with the cross. But the First Christians held the same cross up as a kind of taunt: you think that scares us? We can look right at it because we know that the love of God is more powerful than anything the world can throw at us. That’s why the First Christians began to use words like “redemption,” “liberation,” “salvation” in connection to that cross. It means that we’ve been bought back like those who have been enslaved. The ransom has been paid for us. We have been saved and healed by the power of the cross. That’s why today in the course of this liturgy, we are going to look at that terrible cross, in which all of our fears reside. And we are also going to reverence it as the place where our salvation was won and where God demonstrates his journey with us all the way down. 

Homily for Palm Sunday, Year B

“The Master Has Need Of It”

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for Palm Sunday, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Palm Sunday is the beginning of the holiest week of the year. The Passion Narrative which we just read, has so many theological and spiritual themes that we cannot possibly exhaust in a Sunday homily. So, my homily will be on the Gospel passage we read just before the procession with palms. The most outstanding line in that Gospel is “The Master has need of it.” What does it mean? It means that my whole life does not belong to me. That’s what Baptism is about. It is a character sacrament; it is a branding sacrament. By it, we take up the character of God. We are no longer a bunch of people who happened to gather together, rather we are the people of God. That’s what baptism makes us. I once picked up a dog when I was in Memphis. I almost ran over the beautiful dog. As soon as I parked my car, I called on the dog to come, and he fearfully and suspiciously approached me. I robbed his head and when he started wagging his tail, I picked him up and headed to an animal shelter. Upon getting there, the young lady I met scanned the dog and then said, “Oh, I can see the name and address of the owner.” Utterly surprised, I asked her, “How do you know?” She said, “The dog is branded. It has a chip with the name and address of the owner.” In ancient times, when a young man entered the Roman army, he was branded on the upper arm. The brand marked him as a member of the Roman army, just as the brand marked the dog as belonging to the owner. When each one of us is baptized, we also receive a brand, a character that says, “I belong to Christ.” “The Master has need of me.” “My whole life now is about him.” 

We’ve been told time after time that God does not need anything. And that’s really true. God is perfect and complete in himself. However, God is always inviting us to share in his life and in his creative activity. The line, “The Master has need of it” does not mean that God is lacking something and wants that something from me. Strictly speaking, God does not need anything. God is the Lord of the whole universe. God is the Creator of all things. God doesn’t need anything. God doesn’t need our existence. God doesn’t need our work. God can accomplish on his own whatever he wants. But then Christianity offers us a great privilege to share in God’s life and God’s creative activity. God delights in allowing us to participate and cooperate with his providence. The great French Mathematician-philosopher, Blaise Pascal coined the mysterious and wonderful phrase, “the dignity of causality,” which means that God, in his love, decided to bring about his purposes in the world through us. He grants us the dignity of causality in his kingdom. But long before Blaise Pascal, the great St. Thomas Aquinas said that we can act as instruments or secondary causes for God’s purposes. So, in a strict sense, God does not need us but he needs us in the sense he wants to draw us into his world. Once we understand this principle, everything changes in our life. Customarily we think that our time, talent and treasure belong to us. The moment I realize I have certain talents and endowments, all I am thinking about is how I am going to use them to achieve my personal goal in life: I am going to use them to make my life better and more accomplished. I am going to use them for whatever I want. But in the line of “The Master has need of it,” we should turn it all around on its head. The gifts we have (by the way, it is not by accident that they are called gifts, and not things I deserve or own) are for the sake of Christ so that Christ can use them for his own salvific purpose. 

Let’s now make it concrete. If you are a smart person, you have academic degrees, you are an articulate person, have you ever asked yourself the question, “How come I am this smart?” Is it just to show off, and to accomplish something just for yourself? Yes, you can accomplish something for yourself and for the nation, but then, have you given that sharp mind to Christ so that he might use it? Think of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the masterminds of the western civilization, ranking with Plato, Immanuel Kant. It is awesome that Aquinas gave his mind to Christ, and used it to serve Christ’s purposes. If you are really good with people, you are the sociable type, people are fond of you and you are popular with the people, you can use your popularity and likability in a superficial way to serve your own purpose, or you acknowledge that what you have is a gift from God and then allow God to use you to accomplish something greater than showing off. You can give it back to the Lord. You can use that gift to be an evangelist. You can use that gift to serve the needs of others. If you are good at organizing events, making phone calls, making delicious meals, speaking effortlessly and being able to convince people, give it to Christ. Allow him to use your gifts to further his kingdom. If you have the gift of courage, don’t just use it to defend yourself. In fact, it is properly a gift when it is used to serve the other, the little ones of Christ. Christ gave you that gift so that you can use it for his purposes. 

Happy Holy Week!

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B

The Law Of The Gift

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Our Gospel for the fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B contains one of the most beautiful and terrible quotations in the entire Bible: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” We are told that some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover Feast wanted to see Jesus. Coming to one of the disciples, Philip, they said, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” Some biblical commentators have opined that they wanted to inform Jesus about the seriousness of the danger surrounding him and also to suggest he flees with them to Greece. If that’s the case, Jesus’ response shows that he chose to face death rather than seek a way to escape. He preferred to do the will of the father. 

Look at this way: this is Jesus upon whom the crowds and his disciples had placed their hopes. His triumphant entry into the holy city of Jerusalem was seen by them as the time of fulfillment and liberation from their enemies. But right before them, Jesus speaks of falling to the ground and dying. To make matter more complicated, he says, “Whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” When the people are talking about being raised up, Jesus is talking about falling down; and when the people thought that his triumphant entry into Jerusalem indicates a time of fulfillment, Jesus is talking about hating this life. 

What does this mean? This is what the great St. Pope John Paul II called “The Law of the Gift:” That your being increases in the measure that you give it all away. The Lord knows that if he avoids coming to the cross, if he flees with the Greeks and prolongs his life on earth, if he refuses to do the will of the Father, if the Father’s will is not his food, if he loves his life so much that he’s willing to do anything and everything to protect and prolong it, humanity will remain in sin; the prophetic vision of Jeremiah: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt…” (Jeremiah 31:31-32) “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (33b) will remain unfulfilled, the enmity between God and the human race will continue, salvation will not be won, Satan will continue to have free rein, the general sense of hopelessness and despair will be intensified. More to it, the joy of salvation will not be attained, and the cause of Jesus would have ended. 

But by giving his life, by falling to the ground and dying like a seed, new life, great life, joyful life, hopeful life, peaceful life, and salvation is won for the human race. If a grain of wheat does not fall into the ground and dies, it simply remains a grain of wheat, an insignificant grain of wheat that doesn’t worth a lot. But it falls into the ground and dies, it germinates, grows, and produces lots of fruits that can feed a family, a group of people, a nation and the entire world. What’s so important to you? Life. Money. Time. Health. Wealth. Are you willing to let the will of God to trump over them? Are you willing to share them with others? Have you ever done something significant for someone that the person breaks down and sheds tears of joy and says to you, “Thank you! Thank you?” What you did has given some life to another, and you feel very glad and satisfied that you were able to do it. If you had hold on and never gives, you’ll not only deny life and joy to another but to yourself as well. 

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B

How Jesus Fulfills The Prophetic Vision

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Sacred Scripture is littered with so many amazing and pivotal quotations, but what we see in our first reading for this weekend is one of the most crucially important quotations in the entire Bible. From the lips of prophet Jeremiah, we hear: “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt…” (Jeremiah 31:31-32) “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (33b). The central word in that prophetic declaration is “covenant,” bĕriyth in Hebrew, and it is absolutely central to biblical revelation. The great St. Irenaeus said that the best way to understand salvation history is to see it as the establishment of covenants between God and his people. God made covenants with Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses and David. But what is a covenant? It is not so much a contract, which is about exchange of goods and services— you do this for me, and I will do that for you. A covenant is rather a bond, a personal bond, a sharing of life. We don’t speak of marriage contract, rather marriage covenant: I will be yours and you will be mine. This is what covenant life is about. So, the great feature of the biblical covenant is indeed, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” It is not an exchange of goods and services, rather an exchange of life and exchange of  persons. 

How is a covenant done in the Old Testament? It was typically sealed in blood and sacrifice. When Noah and his family exited the ark, he built an altar and offered an animal sacrifice to establish a covenant with God (Genesis 8:18-20). After God made a covenant with Abraham, he took three different animals (a heifer, a goat, and a ram) and cut them in two signifying the seriousness of the covenant. The animals represent Abraham and Yahweh, and the cutting of the animals in half represents the pledging of their fidelity to each other (Genesis 15:9-21). When Moses and the Israelites got to Mount Sinai on the way to the Promised Land, God made a covenant with them and renewed the one he had made with Abraham. After that, Moses sprinkled blood first on the altar and then on the people (Exodus 24:1-18). David’s covenant with the Lord was signed and renewed for about a thousand years through the blood sacrifice of the Temple. But why is blood and sacrifice used to seal a covenant? Firstly, because blood signals life and the exchange of life. God wants to get his life into his people, Israel. And he wants their life to be given to him in return. Secondly, because we’ve gone off-kilter with divine life. So, getting on line through the covenant will hurt. It is said that when people brought animals to the temple in Jerusalem for sacrifice, what they were saying symbolically was, what was happening to this animal by right should be happening to me. The blood of the animals symbolizes the life blood poured out in reparation. 

With this background in mind, let’s go back to Jeremiah, one of the greatest prophets of Israel. And by the way, Jeremiah prophesied during one of the trying times in Israel’s history. Babylon was encircling Israel and they were deeply threatened by their enemies. Jeremiah knew Israel had failed to live up to the demands of the covenant. He knew the Law given to Moses. He knew about the hundreds of thousands of sacrifices offered in the temple. But he also knew that none of them was working. Israel did not belong entirely to the Lord. So, out of the depths, he prophesied about a day to come, a day of fulfillment when the covenant would definitively be sealed and lived out, when the Law would no longer be a dead letter, honored and written only in stone. As he put it, it would be written on the hearts of the people of Israel. He prophesied the day when God will entirely be Israel’s God and Israel will entirely be God’s people. This is prophetic vision on full display. Six centuries after Jeremiah’s prophecy, a young Jewish rabbi, who performed great miracles of healing and demonstrated a mastery over the forces of nature, enters the  Upper Room situated in the holy city of Jerusalem. Surrounded by his disciples for Passover supper, he takes the cup of blessing in his sacred hands and makes an extraordinary pronouncement: “This is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” 

We know those words well from the Mass; they are the words of the consecration. But when Jesus’ disciples first heard those words, what came to their minds wasn’t the consecration of the Eucharist. What they heard was how Jesus is evoking all the great covenants of Israel. Jesus is demonstrating an exchange of life between God and his people— the chalice of his Blood. More to it, he is boldly associating his covenant with the one predicted by Jeremiah six centuries earlier. Jesus is saying the sacrifice of his life, the shedding of his blood, his death on the cross the next day will at last initiate an unbroken bond between God and his people. All the great prophets acknowledged that Israel did not fulfill the covenant God made with them. But in the Upper Room, on the Last Supper, Jesus declares that the shedding of his Blood, which Jeremiah saw centuries ago, has now become a reality. He is now fulfilling it on behalf of Israel and the whole human race. This is why in our Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (John 12:32). What’s the lifting up? It is the lifting up of crucifixion. The shedding of sacrificial blood. In that act, Jesus is saying, “I am making the whole world into the new Israel. I am making the whole world blood brothers and sisters of God. Jesus is the coming together of divinity and humanity. He is the moment when faithful Yahweh meets faithful Israel. He is the Law of God inscribed on the heart of humanity. 

God is nothing but love. Therefore to have the divine life in you is to comply with that love. To have the law written on your heart is to live out the law of the gift, namely that my being increases in the measure that I give it away. If you live that way, you are a blood brother or blood sister of God. The divine life is not something you hold on to yourself as a private privilege. It is something that flows through you into the world. This is exactly why Jesus said in our Gospel today, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain. But if it dies, it produces much fruit.” This is the law of divine life, everybody. That’s the law of the gift. Unless you give yourself away, you remain just a single grain. The selfish philosophy that says, “my life, my ego, my accomplishment etc. is not of divine life. But if I become a blood brother or sister of God, I will give my life lavishly away just as Jesus gave his life lavishly away. And that’s when I will produce much fruit. This is the covenant. This is what the covenant means. This is the fruit of the covenant. At every Mass, we are invited to drink the cup of this new covenant: “Take this all of you and drink from it.” What does that mean? It means we take into ourselves exactly what this sacrifice calls for. The great St. Thomas Aquinas said, the Eucharist is the fulfillment of the Law because the Eucharist is the moment when that Law of God is indeed written in our hearts, when the covenant is not just external Law but becomes our flesh and blood.

Veni Sancte Spiritus! 

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent: Scrutiny Year A

The Spiritual Journey On Full Display

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent: Scrutiny Year A

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, March 10, 2024

In the Bible, blindness is a symbol of spiritual blindness. It is a metaphor for someone’s incapacity and inability to see what truly matters. It is used as a spiritual metaphor to describe the spiritual condition of someone who is either unable or unwilling to perceive divine revelation. Blindness is a symbolism of sin. The opening line of today’s Gospel (John 9:1-41) says, “As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.” Truly, the man’s problem is a physical condition, and Jesus did restore his sight. But look at blindness in the context of the Bible. As I said earlier, it is often used as a symbol of spiritual blindness. What does sin do to us? A lot! But one thing it does is that it fuddles and obscures our consciousness. It distorts our vision of things. In the physical, we might be functioning very well, let’s say in the professional, political, economic order etc. But if we are trapped in sin, we are blind to the most important realities, we are blind in terms of the right direction for our lives. You can be doing well and flourishing in the worldly sense, but you are just staggering around like a drift wood on a moving sea— with no particular direction. At the deeper level, you are simply lost. By the way, the man blind from birth is everyone of us. In Original Sin, we are all born blind. It means that long before we begin to make any conscious decisions and choices, even before we reach the age of accountability, we are born into a dysfunctional world. How’s this possible? Is this believable? Well, studies show that some people are born already addicted to hard drugs— heroin, crack cocaine and so on. Such persons haven’t yet made any conscious moral choice, nevertheless, they are born with addiction. This is how it is with all of  us. We are all born blind. We are born into a world that is marked by cruelty, violence, hatred and everything else that bedevils us. 

Upon meeting the man blind from birth, Jesus demonstrates his opposition to his condition, he shows he is the enemy of this blindness. If you notice, the Lord did not wait for the blind man to seek him out or to beg for the restoration of his sight. From his lips we hear, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” You can read this as follows: “If you sincerely allow me into your life, I am going to be your light. I will lead you and guide you.” And from the beginning of his Gospel, John says, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5), which means that Jesus comes into our world as the light meant to illumine eyes blinded by sin. After declaring who he is in relation to darkness, Jesus does something very weird. He spits on the ground, makes a mud paste by mixing his saliva and the clay soil. After that he rubs the paste on the blind man’s eyes and said to him, “Go wash in the Pool of Siloam.” What does Siloam mean? As John notes, it means Sent. Very often in John’s Gospel, Jesus is referred to as “the One who was sent.” To his Father, he himself refers to as “the One who sent me.” Where am I going with this? Being immersed in the pool is evocative of Baptism. We know that by baptism, we are immersed in Christ, the One who is sent by the Father. We are washed clean of the blindness of sin and are now able to see. This is what the sacraments of the Church, especially Baptism, does for us. We are saved and salved (healed) through them. They enable us to see what really matters. 

At this point, the man blind from birth recovers his sight. Glory be to God! But as the man returns home, how do people respond? They are divided in their view of who he is. Some say, “Isn’t this the one who used to sit and beg?” (John 9:8). Others say, “It is.” But others say, “No, he just looks like him.” They are confused about his actual identity. But read their reaction with a deeper spiritual vision. When we are immersed in Christ, when Jesus salves and saves us, when the Transfigured One transforms us, we are no longer the same person we were before. Something beyond human comprehension happens to us. We are changed. We are transformed. We are metamorphosed, both at the spiritual level and at the physical. Something hard to explain happens to us. We look different. We act different. People who used to know you can barely recognize us. And even if they do, they may not understand what happened to you. Your language has changed. Your attitude has changed. Your lifestyle has changed. Your worldview has changed. You are no more bitter. You are now a more loving, compassionate and patient person. You no longer speak ill of others or wish ill to them. You look for something good about them to appreciate. And you wish them well and pray for them, even as they continue to hate and ridicule you. This is the actual transformation of our lives when we come to Jesus. Meanwhile, as they debate among themselves about whether he was the one or someone that looks like him, the once blind man from birth said, “ego eimi,” which literally means “I am”. If you are a careful reader of John, you cannot possibly miss his response. Why? Because “ego eimi” is the great name of God. When God came to Moses and was sending him to Pharaoh to let the enslaved ancient Israelite to go, Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them? (Exodus 3:13) God replies, “This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”  (Exodus 3:14). And throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus uses that little phrase, “Ego eimi” (I am). “I am the bread of life.” “Ego eimi” “I am the Good Shepherd.” “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” I am the Gate.” Jesus is saying that he is in himself God’s own presence to the human race. It also means that when you are baptized, when you are immersed in Christ, when you are grafted into Christ, when you are salved and saved by Christ and you conform to him, you become another Christ. Are you confused or in doubt? Read St. Paul. In his letter, he said, “It is no longer I who live; but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). So, the man born blind, once he has been christified through Baptism and the sacraments, can rightly say just like his Master, ‘ego eimi.” 

As the neighbors of the man born blind wrestled with his new reality, the Pharisees entered the scene. As Jesus’ enemy number one, they refused to handle the truth. They refused to give credit to whom credit is due. They invited the salved and saved man, harassed him, ridiculed him, questioned his authenticity and the legitimacy of his utterance. They also accused Jesus of being a bad man whom God cannot listen to. A great miracle has just happened, but rather than give God the glory, they trash and undermine the healer— Jesus. I tell you, there are a lot of people out there deeply invested in blindness. That means their means of making money, acquiring political power, increasing their honor and fame, intensifying their pleasure and whatever else they do, is dependent upon the fact that most people are not spiritually awake, that most people are spiritually blind. Because they are thriving due to the spiritual blindness of many people, they would not want someone who has been liberated to emerge. They don’t want someone who sees the truth and what really matters. Why? Because he is going to cause them a lot of trouble. So, if you have started the spiritual journey, if your life is truly hidden in Christ, you can say, “ego eimi.” You can rightly say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ Jesus who is living in me.” But after that, don’t forget to stay awake at all times. Be alert and vigilant, and know that the devil is prowling like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour. Take this to the bank: you will be opposed, not only by those in the world, but sometimes by your fellow brothers and sisters in the church. The more Christlike you are, the more you walk the spiritual path, the more you will be opposed by all those people who are invested in blindness. Don’t be naive as to believe that you are going to be loved by all. No! That’s why Jesus says, “Be innocent as a dove but as clever as serpents” (Matthew 10:16b). 

After enduring the mockery of the Pharisees, the man born blind testifies, “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of the person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.” Upon hearing his powerful testimony, the Pharisees accused him of being born totally in sin and immediately threw him out. Alone in the world once again, Jesus finds him and asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The man responds, “Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him.” The Lord says, you are looking at him. And the man makes one of the great confessions of faith in the New Testament: “I do believe, Lord.”  Then  we hear, “he worships him.” Meaning, he acknowledges Jesus’ divinity. This is the whole spiritual life on full display. We are born with the blindness of Original Sin. Then we are brought to vision through the immersion of Baptism and other sacraments. They brought us change that is real. We become Alter Christus— another Christ. As we live this changed and transformed life, we face opposition. But despite these oppositions, we continue to walk the spiritual path. We continue to evangelize the Lordship of Jesus. And even as the world opposes us, rejects us in every turn, even as we lose friends and members of family who no longer want to associate with us, as they are throwing us out of their lives, we refuse to bulge. Why? Because we know that it is only in his light that we are able to see. 

God bless you! 

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year B

Lent: Season Of Returning To The Basics 

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Year B

Church of St. Bridget of Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, March 3, 2024

When a football (soccer) club isn’t playing well, if week after week they lose their matches, analysts usually say something like, “the manager should see that his players get back to the basics of the sport we all love.” What are those basics, those fundamentals? Passing and moving the ball around with their feet while maintaining control and possession; dribbling when necessary without losing the ball to your opponent, shooting with accuracy, tackling and heading. The season of Lent is the period when the Church enjoins her children, who are like a soccer team that is playing badly, to go back to the fundamentals. What are our fundamentals? The Ten Commandments! Why the Ten Commandments? Because they function as the bedrock of moral and spiritual life. Before you can make progress in your faith journey, you must be grounded in them. Glory be to God, our first reading (Exodus 20:1-17) for this Sunday is the Ten Commandments.Let’s briefly look at each of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, we cannot possibly exhaust them in a Sunday homily. If you are interested in knowing more of them, consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church and you will find a thorough treatment of each of the Commandments. 

The first commandment says, “I am the Lord your God, You shall not have other gods besides me.” The first commandment is the most important. God alone should be at the center of our life and there should be no competition at all. Love is hierarchical. Authentic Christian charity is friendship with God first and with the people of God for the sake of God. The point is that we cannot worship anything else. What’s the highest love of my life? What is my greatest treasure? If it is power, pleasure, honor, wealth, then my spiritual life is off-kilter. If I am willing to commit crime for someone, my religious and spiritual life is in a mess. Second commandment: “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.” How do we often read this? Avoid swearing! Avoid using the name of the Lord in an irreverent way. That’s okay. But within the ancient context, it means we should not use God’s name in incantation (abracadabra) or to cast a spell on someone. It means don’t use God’s name in a manipulative manner. I tell you, there are a lot of preachers out there who break this very commandment often when they say, “God told me…” when it wasn’t God that told them and they know it. For one thing, it is lying, but more so, they are using God’s name in a manipulative way. You can include fake speaking in tongues here as well. The third commandment, which is derived from the first two is, “Remember to keep holy the sabbath day.” If God is the Lord of your life, if God is the highest love of your life, if you exist for God alone, you will most certainly set aside Sunday as a day you will worship God with your sisters and brothers in the faith. Faith or religion will not be a private matter. It will not be an abstraction, rather something concrete you do by setting aside all other priorities of yours, in order to assemble with others where the singular priority is the worship of God. In the good old days, on Sunday, we brought all commercial and economic activities to a close so as to devote that very day to the worship of God in church. The reason for suspending all other activities is because you are meant to go to church. Today, this very commandment is not being honored as it was honored several years ago. Years ago, 97% of Americans claimed belief in God and some affiliation with religion. Today, it is 47%, and the fastest growing congregation is the “Nones,” people who claim they have no religion. Some people think it is “cool” or smart to not have religion. Others blame religion and religious people as the reason why they got disconnected from religion. I accept, we deserve some blame. We have done some terrible things. But so also every institution out there. There are some others who won’t come to church unless the church accepts everything they believe, every social, cultural and political view they hold. Well, that won’t be the church of Jesus Christ. Moreover, even if the Catholic Church adopts every crazy view out there, a lot of these people won’t come. As for those of us who still believe, who still come to church, bear this in mind, not honoring this commandment means we are not concretizing our commitment to God. 

The first three commandments belong to the First Table of the Law. When Moses came down from the mountain, he had two tablets in his hands. The first tablet has the three commandments that deal with God, and appropriately they come first. They are the most important. But on the second tablet, we have the seven commandments that deal with our relationship with each other. Let’s now look at the first of the second tablet, that is, the fourth commandment: “Honor your father and mother.” Why should I honor my father and mother? Because they gave me life. They brought me into existence. In a way, I owe them everything. However, the Church has always taken a broader look at the fourth commandment to include the honor we owe to any authority figure in our life— think of the honor that a student owes to his teacher, the honor that a player owes to a coach, the honor that a citizen owe to a judge or a political figure, and also the honor we owe to the great traditions that gave rise to us. What do you think will happen if suddenly the honoring of authority and traditions evaporate? I tell you, our society will collapse. If we continue to insist on this extreme claim to “my rights, my prerogatives, I decide what is true, and don’t tell me what to do” we will continue to move into very dangerous waters. We are to honor our fathers and mothers, and also to honor those in authority and honor the great tradition that gave rise to our life. By this I don’t mean, “worship them.” It’s idolatry to do so. Do not worship any of them no matter how great they have been to you. Today, we see people in our country who are willing to commit crime, who are willing to go to jail in order to protect the interest of their beloved politician. Again, this is taking us on dangerous waters.  

Next, we have the fifth commandment, which says, “You shall not kill.” In the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments, we see over and over again that our God is the God of life. Life belongs to God. God is the giver of life, and it is his prerogative alone to take life too. He is the Lord of life. As such, we do not have the right or prerogative and it is not up to us to decide to end someone’s life or to end our own life. That means abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and even life sentences in prison are all a violation of this very commandment— You shall not kill. But this commandment is not absolute. Because from time immemorial, the Church recognizes the legitimacy of self-defense, which means that in defense of one’s own life, one can take the life of another. Aside from that, taking another’s life does not belong to us. The many ways in our culture and society that we have arrogated to ourselves a lordship over life is a violation of God’s commandment. The sixth commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” Adultery is a violation of marriage vows. However, in a broader sense, it includes any violation against the virtue of chastity. What is chastity? It means sexual uprightness, right ordering and right behavior in the sexual area. What’s sex for? Is it for your pleasure? The Church says no! It is for unity and procreation. Therefore it belongs  within the context of a committed marriage between a man and a woman.” In the seventh commandment, God says, “You shall not steal.” I think a lot of us, in small ways and great ways, have violated this very commandment. This commandment forbids taking things from others without their permission. But when considered in a broader sense, it also has to do with justice. One of the great ancient philosophers, Plato, centuries ago said, “Justice is rendering to each his due.” That is, giving to other people what is due to them. This means honoring their own identities, honoring their culture, honoring their property, honoring their religion, honoring their language, and honoring what truly belongs to them. Whoever violates any of this, commits injustice and violates this very commandment.

In the eight commandment, God says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In an era of social media, content creation, fake news and the rise of social media influencers, the seventh commandment becomes very relevant today. People of God should care about truthful speech and what you say about other people. Even if you dislike someone’s attitude, behavior and idiosyncrasies, don’t spread and peddle false stories about them. When talking about others, don’t add what is not in their life and don’t subtract what is in their life, especially what is good and noble in their life. The legendary late South African reggae musician, Lucky Philip Dube, in one of his lyrics said, “if you can’t say something good about somebody, just shut up.” You are destroying the life of another when you bear false witness. You are destroying a great country, America, when you spread fake news. Think of so many Americans, young people who ended their lives due to what was said about them on social media. The commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” includes all of these.

Finally, the ninth and tenth commandments say, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.” “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Sometimes we desire things not because they are great in themselves or that we really need them. We desire them simply because someone else desires them. I tell you, some adults behave like children. When I went to Nigeria on Christmas in 2022, as always, I acted as the chaperone of my nieces and nephews. Among the things I noticed while watching them play was that, something, a broken toy could be ignored by all of them. But the moment one of them picks up that very mangled toy and begins to play with it, the real owner and others will, all of a sudden be interested in that toy. But all along it has been lying on the ground with no one showing interest in it. The same goes with advertisements. You see an ad on television about some shoes, and you have never given a hoot about the shoe. But then, in the ad, you noticed that some famous person liked that shoe. Right away, you begin to desire it too. A lot of conflict comes from the fact that we desire the same thing even if we don’t really need them. The Commandment says, “Don’t covet your neighbor’s goods or wife.” If you want a wife or something for yourself, go and get yours. Do not desire that which someone already has. This bad desire has led so many people into serious trouble. To desire a wife or husband is good. To desire to own a car or something else is good. But don’t turn your attention towards the goods or wife or husband of your neighbor. And let’s not forget that the greatest and most satisfying desire is God alone. In him alone is our soul finally at rest. If you want to make a good examination of conscience, the Ten Commandments should be your guide. And once you realize you have violated any of them, don’t make excuses. Simply go to confession and have your sins forgiven. 

Veni Sancte Spiritus!