Q. I would be interested in your analysis of the enclosed article that was in my parish’s Sunday bulletin. — F.W.R., Florida.
A. Here is the text of what appeared in the bulletin:
“Addition to homilies/reflections on the daily Scripture readings at daily Mass. It is permissible, according to the Roman Catholic liturgy regulations, that any competent lay person may offer his/her reflections on the meaning and significance of the Sacred Scriptures which are proclaimed at daily Mass. In light of this, I am announcing just such an addition, which I believe will enhance and be a source of Christ’s own enlightenment for those of us who attend daily Mass.
“Beginning on the first Thursday after Ash Wednesday and throughout Lent, [the deacon] will preach as usual on Wednesday at the 5:15 p.m. Mass. [The visiting deacon] will preach at the Friday 8:30 a.m. liturgy. On Tuesday and Thursday at the 8:30 a.m. Masses, the reflection, by a competent and experienced staff member, will be delivered right after the post-Communion prayer. On these days, the Gospel will be read by the priest and that will be followed immediately by the Prayer of the Faithful.”
According to canon law (canon 767 §1), preaching the homily during Mass is reserved to a priest or deacon. However, says Redemptionis Sacramentum, the 2004 Vatican instruction on liturgical abuses, “if the need arises for the gathered faithful to be given instructions or testimony by a layperson in a church concerning the Christian life, it is altogether preferable that this be done outside Mass. Nevertheless, for serious reasons it is permissible that this type of instruction or testimony be given after the priest has proclaimed the prayer after Communion. This should not become a regular practice, however. Furthermore, these instructions and testimony should not be of such a nature that they could be confused with the homily, nor is it permissible to dispense with the homily on their account” (n. 74).
So, your pastor was within the Church’s regulations in having lay reflections after the post-Communion prayer at daily Mass during Lent, but did he have serious reasons for doing so, and did scheduling these reflections twice a week for the six weeks of Lent make it a regular practice, and was the homily eliminated? His announcement in the bulletin appeared to dispense with the homily since he said that “the Gospel would be read by the priest and that will be followed immediately by the Prayer of the Faithful.”
It would appear that your pastor was on shaky liturgical ground with this innovation.
Q. The Gospels and St. Paul recount the public appearances of the resurrected Jesus in the forty days after Easter, but there is no mention of an appearance to the Blessed Mother. Why not? — F.J.A., Massachusetts.
A. We know from the Gospels that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalen, then to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, to St. Peter, and later that Easter Sunday night to all of the apostles, except Thomas. According to St. Paul, the risen Lord also appeared to St. James, to a crowd of more than 500, and finally to Paul himself. But there is no mention of Him appearing to His mother.
Can anyone believe, however, that Jesus did not appear that first day to the Blessed Virgin, the one who had nurtured and guided Him, the one who had stood faithfully and sorrowfully at the foot of the cross, and the one in whose arms had been placed the lifeless body of her Son, a scene so beautifully captured in Michelangelo’s famous sculpture The Pieta?
So why isn’t this mentioned in the New Testament? Probably because the public appearances were necessary to convince people that Jesus had in fact risen from the dead. But Jesus’ visit to His Mother was a personal and special visit to assure her that He had returned from the dead just as He had prophesied many times. This hidden appearance was to reward our Lady for her faithfulness and to end the separation that had occurred on Good Friday.
In his Wednesday audience on May 21, 1997, Pope St. John Paul II explained that “if the authors of the New Testament do not speak of the mother’s encounter with her risen Son, this perhaps can be attributed to the fact that such a witness would have been considered too biased by those who denied the Lord’s Resurrection, and therefore not worthy of belief.”
However, he said, “it is legitimate to think that the mother was probably the first person to whom the risen Jesus appeared. Could not Mary’s absence from the group of women who went to the tomb at dawn (cf. Mark 16:1, Matt. 28:1) indicate that she had already met Jesus? This inference would also be confirmed by the fact that the first witnesses of the Resurrection, by Jesus’ will, were the women who had remained faithful at the foot of the Cross and therefore were more steadfast in faith.”
The late Holy Father also said that “it seems reasonable to think that Mary, as the image and model of the Church which waits for the Risen One and meets Him in the group of disciples during His Easter appearances, had had a personal contact with her risen Son, so that she, too, could delight in the fullness of paschal joy. Present at Calvary on Good Friday (cf. John 19:25) and in the Upper Room on Pentecost (cf. Acts 1:14), the Blessed Virgin, too, was probably a privileged witness of Christ’s Resurrection, completing in this way her participation in all the essential moments of the paschal mystery.”
Q. In a newspaper article the day before Easter, the Rev. Carl Evans, a Lutheran pastor in Falmouth, Mass., said that there are no “impartial historical accounts” about the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. He said that while the Roman historian Tacitus and the Jewish historian Josephus talk briefly about Jesus, “there are no records outside the Gospel texts that talk about going to a party where water was turned to wine, seeing some guy walking on water, or Jesus Himself, raised from death….Perhaps someday someone will come up with irrevocable proof of the Gospel story and it may well change the world as we know it, but until that time there will be no proof of the Resurrection that you will read in an historical Jesus article or see on a television screen.”
How would you respond? — F.O., Massachusetts.
A. By reminding Pastor Evans that the world has already been changed by the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Does he really think that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, we would be talking about Him today? Wouldn’t He have been just another victim of the Romans who was crucified, died, and was buried — and was quickly forgotten about? Recall the words of the Pharisee Gamaliel when his colleagues in the Sanhedrin wanted to put the apostles to death after Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven:
“ ‘Fellow Israelites, be careful what you are about to do to these men. Some time ago, Theudas appeared, claiming to be someone important, and about four hundred men joined him, but he was killed, and all those who were loyal to him were disbanded and came to nothing. After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census. He also drew people after him, but he too perished and all who were loyal to him were scattered.
“ ‘So now I tell you, have nothing to do with these men, and let them go. For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.’ They were persuaded by him” (Acts 5:34-39).
From the hindsight of two thousand years, Pastor Evans should also be persuaded. He surely knows what happened to the apostles for preaching about the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus — they were, with the exception of John, persecuted and executed. All they had to say to avoid punishment and death was that their story of Jesus was false. What could possibly have inspired otherwise sensible men to go to their deaths for a myth?
People are not willing to die for a lie, but they may be willing to die for the truth, as have millions of followers of Jesus down through the centuries, including the 21 Christians who were beheaded recently in Libya for refusing to reject Jesus and embrace Islam.
Their witness is all the proof that is needed about the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
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