Scriptures of the Sunday:
From the Psalm 116: The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. By the LORD has this been done; it is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day the LORD has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.
From John 20: Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said: My Lord and My God!
In 1978, the Italian-born German adventurist, Reinhold Messner, along with his climbing partner, Peter Habeler, became the first people to successfully climb Mount Everest without the use of oxygen tanks. After descending from the 29,000-foot-tall apex, they arrived back at base camp barely alive. When asked why he went up there to die, Messner exclaimed, “I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live.”
This account has a nice connection to Jesus’ Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection. Jesus willingly accepted his death on a cross, a death no one wanted for himself. If the mass media existed in 30 AD, I’m sure they would have been in His face asking the same question the media asked of Messner. However, Jesus’ answer would have been slightly different. He would have said, “I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there so that YOU may live.”
It is one thing in life to make a sacrifice for oneself, but an entirely higher level exists for those who are self-sacrificial for others, imitating the love and care of Jesus Christ. In a Palm Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI once said, “Self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ is the key to the Christian life.”
In other words, in the Christian life we go “all out,” not for ourselves, but that others may live. We live to serve others, and even more, we live to serve Christ and have a participation in His sacrifice, that He has allowed us to join in. Christ has the Perfect 100% Sacrifice, but He has allowed us to sit at the table with Him, just like those 12 apostles, and to “do this in Memory of Me.” That is, to join in The Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, which is in to His Perfect Sacrifice, by an avenue Jesus established at His Last Supper. Thus, in liturgy now, we join together in worship always with a tie to the Living Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. There is no true worship without Sacrifice. That statement should be embedded in your mind, and reason for you to be in a Holy Mass instead of a room somewhere in some other Christian or religious service—where they don’t call on their Sacrifice connection. Yet Catholics in Holy Mass always call on our Sacrifice of Jesus connection. For how are we to worship to God and ever think of using any bypass of what Jesus laid down for us—in His New Covenant worship in this Holy Body and Blood? Did He not do this as His farewell act—to establish this Worship with the Sacrifice of Himself in the midst? Did Jesus not say: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one can come to the Father but by Me?” And what “Way” has Jesus established? The answer: His own Body and Blood sacrifice, meeting the human and divine parts needed. It’s the Lesson of St. Thomas. So I direct your focus back to the Gospel image of Thomas being led by Jesus to touch His hands, feet, and side—to realize the Sacrificial Offering of His Lord and Master.
We are asked to do something like that today, too. In honor of the Risen Lord Who is our Holy Sacrifice. In this Mass, on the altar and then to the Eucharistic host we have our Lord come near and real enough to be touched. Let that reality touch you today. Maybe even to be moved to our knees and in humbled attitude by Christ’ Offering, and then, as a result, we are moved to live in sacrificial love out to the world.
In that Pope Benedict homily I mentioned, of 2009, Benedict went on to explain what we are supposed to learn about sacrifice from the crucifixion, adding, “The principle of love, which is at the heart of the Christian faith and is exemplified in Christ’s crucifixion, demands a more universal vision that looks outward and not just inward. This orientation toward others involves not only a ‘single great decision’ in a person’s life, which is relatively easy, but must be a continuing attitude implemented daily in everyday situations. No successful life exists without sacrifice. When I look back on my personal life, I have to say that precisely the times when I said ‘Yes’ to a sacrifice were the greatest and most important moments of my life.”
As no true worship exists without the Sacrifice of Christ, and our need to go to Mass to honor it, we can extend the mystery forth to our own living, inspired by Benedict. He said; No successful life exists without sacrifice. Catch on to that powerful statement. Think of the so many great saints and holy people who knew and lived this meaning of sacrificed in their example. Like Saints Francis of Assisi, Elizabeth of Hungary, and the USA’s own Katherine Drexel who all renounced and sacrificed their wealth to minister to God’s people. Saints Padre Pio, Terese of Lisieux, Bernadette of Lourdes, John Paul the Second, and recently canonized Saint Carlo Acutis all died with bodily sufferings going on to endure, but they each offered up their sufferings as a sacrifice to God for the life of others in the Church and world. Saints Stephen, Cecilia, Maria Goretti, and Fr. Damien and St. Marianne Cope of Hawaii are among the many martyrs who showed extraordinary sacrifice of their lives for the love of Jesus Christ and His Good News—Salvation Mission. All of these saintly people understood sacrifice, and in their own way, offered their suffering for others and their beliefs.
All of those folks get a better nod for triumph than the Mount Everest climbers. Yet we recall the hikers’ saying: ‘I didn’t go hiking up there in all that sacrifice to meet death, I went up there to live.” We are not living day-to-day in Christ’ Sacrifice and now in our own imitation to give up on life’s zest, but actually to experience the true zest of life by doing it.
But today’s saint, Thomas, upon seeing the Precious Wounds on the Risen Body of His Lord and Christ, and Holy Sacrifice for all, would be changed into the self-less Thomas, the non-doubter, and the apostle who is remembered even today in parts of India for bringing the Faith down there as a missionary in the First Church age. There has been a continuous Catholic Christianity in parts of India for 20 centuries.
We may not have India to reach, but the scope of our own lives will be enough, as it is mingled with others. We can be ambassadors for the Holy Mass and for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We can implore people: Why settle for your own limitations in worship to God when it can be paired to being in the Real Presence of Our Lord, Who is the Eternal Sacrifice for you? What else can be substituted for this highest connection or communion with Jesus Christ? If others see this as your highest value, then perhaps it can interest them in the same pathway.
As today’s Psalm 118 says: “My strength and my courage is the LORD, and he has been my savior. The joyful shout of victory in the tents of the just:” Render that in modern speak; “I get my strength and fired-up inspiration for life’s meaning from the Lord, Who keeps letting me intimately be near Him on a Sunday Mass to Sunday Mass basis. The joyful shout inside a Catholic Church of Alleluias in Easter is in likeness to the tents of the just in King David’s time.