Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Fifth Sunday of Easter - April 20, 2008 - Father Joseph Komonchak

The readings that we hear during these weeks of Eastertide, the fifty days that celebrate the resurrection into new life both in Christ and in ourselves, are consistently rich and profound. Two of them stand out today.

As I've mentioned before, some scholars think that the First Epistle of St. Peter makes abundant use of an early Christian homily for Easter and for the celebration of baptism. If this is so, the consecutive reading of this Epistle during this season links us with very early generations of Christians, and in the echo they find in our hearts, we experience our communion with those who first came to believe the joyful news that the Lord had risen.

Today's reading speaks of a new "spiritual house" that God is building. Its cornerstone, chosen and precious, is Jesus Christ, the stone rejected by the builders but picked up from the scrapheap and made the cornerstone. Psalms are cited that illustrate how the first disciples were able to find in their sacred writings prophetical anticipations of the death and resurrection of Christ.

If the essential stone has been laid, now the building needs to be constructed on this foundation. It will be made of other living stones, that is, of men and women who live by the life by which the risen Christ lives. The new spiritual house, the new temple, is not made of stone and wood; it is made of people. And not only that: those who form the new temple will also be the new holy priesthood and their lives will be the new spiritual sacrifices offered within the temple. The priests, the sacrifices, the temple are all described as holy or spiritual-where "spiritual" doesn't mean "vague" or "amorphous," but a temple, and sacrifices, and a priesthood animated by the Spirit of the risen Lord. And thus we have the final sentence of today's reading: "You are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own, so that you may announce the praises' of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." Imagine the impact of these words as spoken to the newly baptized in the early Church. Think of these words as spoken to you, as true of you today.

But something else is mentioned: that Christ is not only the stone into which all the other stones of the temple must be integrated; he is also "a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall." "Stumbling-block" is the original meaning of the word "scandal"; and used here it refers to the fact that for many people the Gospel of redemption through the cross and resurrection of Christ will be something they cannot accept, which causes them to turn away, believing that this stone was rightly rejected by the builders. St. Peter was probably referring to pagans of his time, who were put off by the cross of Christ, and there remain many people who cannot accept the central Christian scandal.

But one wonders if they have really been able to hear it in its own terms. Pope Benedict XVI has long been concerned that what he called "secondary scandals" prevent people from confronting the "primary scandal" that is the basic Christian Gospel. He means by that faults and failures, weaknesses and sins, especially on the part of the preachers of the Christian message. Sometimes it is a matter of clinging to social or political arrangements that have seen their day; sometimes it is a matter of refusing to allow new ways of expressing the faith take the place of ones that once made sense but have become nearly intelligible; sometimes it is the fact that Christians do not live up to the demands of their faith; sometimes it is a matter of such moral failures on the part of Church leaders, that they lose all credibility-that is, trustworthiness-and they will not be listened to even when it is the Good News that they are preaching. The Pope's regular return to the scandal of clerical sex-abuse and of episcopal irresponsibility surely points to this as the kind of scandal that prevents the scandal of the cross from being even encountered, never mind accepted.

The tragedy of this is that this prevents people from really meeting the Christ who in today's Gospel, in response to Thomas's question, proclaims himself to be "the way, the truth and the life." He says of himself that he is at once the goal of human existence and the road that leads there; in St. Augustine's words, Christ is "where we are going and how we are going there." If this life is a journey, it is important to be on the right road, and Christ says, "I am the way." If we human beings seek to know our world, to know ourselves, to know ultimate mystery, Christ says: "I am the truth." If we want that truth even now to permeate our existence, and if we want our existence not to end with death, Christ says: "I am the life."

It is a remarkable claim, but that is precisely the challenge that Christ sets before us today, and every day. Where does our life find its truth? What road are we in fact traveling? Is Christ the truth by which we are living? Is he the path we are walking? Questions for each of us to ask and answer. That we are here today is already a partial answer to such questions; but it may be that we don't believe we are making much progress on the road that leads to true life. If so, we can take courage from another saying of St. Augustine: "It is better to limp along on the road than to race down the wrong road." And it is no small comfort to know that we have so many companions limping along beside us.

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