Friday, April 18, 2025 – Year C

Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

1st reading: Is 52,13 – 53,12
Psalm: 30 (31), 2ab.6, 12,13-14ad,15-16,17.2
2nd reading: Heb 4, 4-16; 5,7-9
Gospel: Jn 18,1 – 19,42

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“Our Beloved was mad to come to earth seeking sinners to make them his friends, his intimates, his fellow men, he who was perfectly happy with the two adorable persons of the Trinity. We will never be able to do for him the follies that he did for us and our actions will not deserve this name because they are only very reasonable acts and far below what our love would want to accomplish. It is therefore the world that is mad, since it ignores what Jesus did to save it. It is the world that is a hoarder who seduces souls and leads them to fountains without water…”

It was in 1894, a month before Céline entered Carmel, that Thérèse wrote to her sister. Yes, he was crazy, our Beloved!

We are well accustomed to saying that Jesus gave his life on the cross for us. 

We are well accustomed to seeing crucifixes in our homes, at certain crossroads, in our churches... The liturgy of the Easter Triduum invites us to renew this gaze and to contemplate in the Passion of Jesus and in his crucifixion, the depth of the love that God has for us. In Jesus, and particularly in Jesus crucified, the greatness of God's mercy for each of us is revealed to us. 

The Church invites us to make our own the cry of Paul in the Letter to the Galatians: “The Son of God loved me and gave himself up for me.” (5,22), not only for  But also for soft ! And later, when we come to adore the cross, to kiss the cross, I truly invite you to raise in your heart, as much as human weakness allows, the expression of gratitude to Jesus: it is for me that you gave your life, it is to open the way to heaven for me. When we speak thus in the first person, we understand well that we can say it for any human person. And to understand that Jesus gave his life for me is identically to receive the grace of wanting to proclaim him, to make him known to the whole world. Loving Jesus and making him loved are two inseparable actions.

Our Beloved was mad. But today our world is experiencing another kind of madness: having lost sight of Heaven, having lost sight of the path to Heaven, that is, the path to the fulfillment of human life, our world is both fascinated by death and seeks to hide it. 

We have removed almost all signs of mourning, whether they be the clothing signs of mourning, the outward signs on houses—which I knew as a child when someone died in a house—we have repainted our hearses in pretty colors so as not to frighten anyone. Some 230 little babies die in silence and invisibility with abortion in our country each year. And we have enshrined this as an inalienable right in the Constitution. No one sees these deaths. But how much suffering… We are preparing to kill the dependent elderly, to kill the seriously ill. There is even talk of killing the people who come to us because they do not have this at home. What madness, brothers and sisters, what madness… How can we forget to this extent the meaning of human life and therefore the meaning of human death? How, after so many centuries of spiritual experience of the Salvation brought by the Lord Jesus, can we so quickly dismiss it and forget it? And at the same time, we mask death and we want to make it or we make it omnipresent. We want to have authority over death. We want to give it ourselves and no longer receive it as a path that only God can transform into a path of life. We do not have the possibility of entering the Kingdom by ourselves. We can only receive it as a grace… When the rich man comes to Jesus and says to him: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mt 19,16:XNUMX) That is to say: what must I do to go to Heaven, what must I do to reach the Kingdom? Jesus did not say to him: "Commit suicide," he said: "Keep the commandments." And the other said: But I have already done that; and I see that it is not enough... “Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” That is to say, do not count on any of your strengths, any of your powers to enter Heaven, but count on me, Jesus.

We have, brothers and sisters, truly good news to share with the world, with our world. Not to give moral lessons, that is not the point, but to make known the power of life given to us in Jesus, the power of salvation given to us in Jesus. 

I remember a parishioner who was baptized late in life and who almost reproached Christians for not having introduced her to Jesus earlier, saying: what a waste of time in my life! 

Yes, brothers and sisters, if we are here this afternoon, it is because the Lord wants to make us his messengers, wants to make us witnesses of good news: it is that through his death and resurrection, Jesus not only makes death a path to the Father, if we enter with him, but he makes all our trials, all our sufferings, a path of life, if we live them with Jesus, if we welcome the Lord Jesus in the very heart of our trials.

The Lord has done foolish things for us, let us do foolish things for him. 

In a letter, three months before her own death, Thérèse wrote to Sister Anne of the Sacred Heart, who was at the Carmel of Saigon in Vietnam:

“O my Sister! I beg you, ask Jesus that I too may love Him and make Him loved; I would like to love Him not with an ordinary love but like the Saints who did foolish things for Him. Alas!! How far I am from resembling them!… Ask Jesus again that I may always do His will, for that I am ready to cross the world… and I am also ready to die!”

Let us ask for this same grace for ourselves, to love Jesus, to make him loved, and to always do his will.

Amen

Father Emmanuel Schwab, Rector of the Shrine