My friends, one of the two Eucharistic Prayers that I use, speaks to the beauty of all creation, and names humankind as the pinnacle of all created life.  Not so long ago, one of you questioned whether we should have such a hierarchy of created life when really humankind is just a part of that. I found this comment most compelling to the point that now when I pray this Eucharistic Prayer, as I will today, I eliminate the hierarchy and pray our gratefulness for all of creation, in all its parts and forms, because together we share a symbioses that makes life “work” for all of creation. 

   As you all know, Robert and I were away these past two weeks cruising the Amazon River and into the Caribbean with Viking.  One of the things that they do really well is to bring historians, and other expert speakers on board to give “cruisers” a fuller picture of the people, land, culture and more, of the places visited. One such individual was an Englishman, Bernard Purrier.  He gave us much to think about in several presentations, but one example that I’d like to share, fits particularly well here, and makes the point that we humans shouldn’t hold ourselves in such high esteem as compared to the rest of creation.

   This was a presentation on whales and dolphins and their fine abilities to know where they are in the water as their eyesight isn’t that great. Because both are mammals, we could say, in a general way, that they are our sisters and brothers.  They also are very intelligent.  Bernard gave us a wonderful example showing their very keen intelligence and sense of caring typical of female dolphins. It apparently has been recorded that female dolphins can sense the heartbeat of a human fetus within its mother’s womb when the woman is in the water and will move to protect this human “sister” from harm.  So then, what does this have to do with Easter Sunday you might be thinking.

   Our brother Jesus came into history over 2,000 years ago to show us how to live, to love, to die, and one day—like him, to pass on—to rise to a new life.  And precisely here is the connection between what Jesus came to do and much of what we experienced on our trip—through speakers, local guides, and our own experiences visiting many new places in our beautiful world. We had a cruise director, Jenna who ended each of her daily presentations explaining the opportunities for the following day that we could choose from by saying, “Whatever you do, live your best life!” 

   Our loving God, my friends, wants the same for us, to live our lives well, striving to be our best, for ourselves and for others, thus sending our brother Jesus as a model for us to follow.  For too long, hundreds of years in fact, before “windows and doors were opened” at the Second Vatican Council, we Catholics were stuck, much like the Jews, in the time of Jesus, adhering to copious, crippling rules and regulations designed by “religious” men whose main concern, it would seem, was to keep people in line by frightening them into submission over the thought of one day meeting a vengeful God who would judge them. 

    The Second Vatican Council poured fresh air into our beloved Church reminding us of just how much our God, did, in fact LOVE us, and we came to know this through our brother Jesus who spoke of our God as a loving parent who welcomed the “prodigal” back, and about a shepherd who left the 99 in search of one that was lost.

   With Vatican Council II, gone was the old story of a mean-spirited God who sent Jesus to die for our sins—and this Council encouraged us all to break out, and away from of this tiny-boxed God, and begin to hear anew, through Jesus, how much each of us is loved.  What the story of Jesus is really all about is his encouragement to be our best selves—to grow beyond our human inclinations to think small, to be safe—to be like the status-quo, and to instead, become people who can see the wonder and the good in all people, all races, all genders, no genders, all religious expressions, and all human manifestations of love—one for another, without excluding and dividing, saying who is welcome, who is not. 

   I was again saddened to see our Bishop Barron’s take on the monumental work of the Second Vatican Council in basically denouncing Jesus’ call that, “we are all one,” by stating this type of inclusion is making our Church, “nicey-nice,” or that Pope Francis is, “dumbing down the Church” in doing the same. 

   We must remember my friends; Good Friday was really all about an attempt to silence someone (Jesus) for not remaining silent in the face of injustice in both Church and State.  We may look at the torture of crucifixion and think, how barbaric, but the same kind of torture can be done in more than physical ways for not being silent in the face of injustice. 

   Our bishop’s statement that, “he will not waste his time until we (AAO) come back to the Church,” is, in my mind, a “crucifixion” of the heart, and is against everything that our brother Jesus stands for. 

   So, my friends, my intent here was to move beyond a traditional Easter Sunday homily to basically say that the reason for our Alleluias today is because Jesus did break, “out of the box,” saying, what you are doing here is just not enough! Whenever you do not see me in any person you meet, when you fail to care for our world and all its creatures, when you basically place law above love, you have failed in being my follower. But the great thing with Jesus, with our God, is we can always have another chance.

   In conclusion then, my friends, I will talk more about the Easter Scriptures in the upcoming weeks, but for today, I wanted to uplift for us the beauty of the longer version of today’s Gospel from John. The key players, besides Jesus are John, Peter, and Mary Magdala. They each, on some level, knew that Jesus would “rise from the dead”—at least they had heard him say that he would.  They wanted to believe but they had no idea what “resurrection” meant. And it is only in this longer version that we basically learn that someone who has experienced resurrection will not appear the same.  In this longer version of the gospel, Mary Magdala did not know Jesus when she met him in the garden.  It was only when he said her name, “Mary” in the way that only he would say it, did she know him! —doing something that was familiar. 

   From this one example friends, we will know others, they will know us, and they will see Jesus, when they see us acting with love in our world, just as he did in his. Amen? Amen! Alleluia!