Jesus – Page 4 – Tony Lusvardi, S.J.

Entering the tomb: a homily for Easter

This Homily for Easter Sunday comes from 2019 and was given just a few days after the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris — thus the reference to the rose window at the end. Seems appropriate this year when Notre Dame has been reopened…

Occasionally the most erudite theologians overlook the most obvious things. This morning’s gospel contains a curious detail that has provoked a great deal of discussion among theologians: why do Mary of Magdala and John, the other disciple, not enter the tomb? Mary sees the stone removed from the tomb and returns to the apostles. John, running and perhaps a bit younger than Peter, arrives at the tomb first, but remains outside. Why? Biblical exegetes have explained this event symbolically–maybe John represents prophecy and Peter represents the institutional Church–but in my opinion the reason is simpler.

It’s a tomb. They were afraid.

Sometimes the simplest explanations are also the most profound. We know that Jesus is risen–maybe this announcement has become too familiar and gets taken for granted–but at that moment Mary, John and Peter did not have that advantage. We must imagine their psychological state that morning. Two days ago, they had seen the humiliation and killing of their Lord, teacher and friend at the hands of evil men. We must imagine the darkness of those days, when violence, lies and selfishness defeated the truth.

The Anointing at Bethany and Holy Week’s unsettling beginning

Going through some old files, I came across this homily for the Monday of Holy Week, written, in my younger and more vulnerable years, when I was a novice in St. Paul, Minnesota.

St. Mary Magdalene penitent, Guercino 1622

During the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius asks us to contemplate the suffering and death of Our Lord. This week, Holy Week, the Church, liturgically, asks us to do the same. The Third Week is one of the times in the Exercises when we ask for strange graces—shame, sorrow, confusion.

The Church’s liturgy also evokes these troubling graces, and it does so by, among other things, confronting us with today’s passage from John, the Anointing at Bethany. The shock this passage should provoke in us is perhaps diminished by its familiarity, but if we really deeply consider what is happening here, then we should be confused. We should be confused because part of us is tempted to side with Judas.

Three hundred days wages! Put in contemporary terms this must amount to something like $30,000, $40,000, $50,000—enough for college scholarships for one or several years, or private high school scholarships for several students; in some Third World countries that much money could build a school. And instead it is being spent on a jar of ointment. An expensive perfume. An ostentatious toiletry.

Seeing truly, judging clearly: homily for the eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

St. Luke, 13th century, Old St. Peter’s, Rome

I have to admit that the opening of today’s first reading, “When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks,” is not the most encouraging thing to read when one has to give a homily. Both the words of Sirach and Jesus’ sayings in the Gospel of Luke deal with what is inside a person and what becomes visible to others, what we see and what we don’t. The first reading is a warning about putting too much faith in outward appearances. Someone might have all the right credentials, but little wisdom; someone might repeat all the fashionable phrases, but say nothing of substance.

The test that Sirach proposes to separate the trustworthy from the slick shyster is tribulation. “As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in tribulation is the test of the just.” It is easy to follow Jesus when he tells us what we want to hear, less so when we might lose friends because of what he says. Fidelity doesn’t mean much when it comes without a cost. Imagine marriage vows modified to promise faithfulness “in good times but not bad, in health but not sickness, wherever I find my bliss.” It’s only when the going gets tough that faith, hope, and love show their worth.

Jesus adds another criterion for distinguishing the enduring truth from the well-dressed lie: you shall know the tree by its fruit. You may have heard people say, “It’s really what’s inside that counts.” Jesus pours a bit of cold water on such sentimentalism. If what’s inside produces thorns, then it can’t really be all that good. Again and again in different ways Jesus calls for the unity of what is inside with what is outside, opposing any division between interior and exterior religion—challenging us to confess his name with both our words and our deeds.

Jesus again and again challenges us to purity of heart, which means purity all the way through—in our thoughts and in our words, in what we do, and what we chose not to do. In the Beatitudes, Jesus promises that the pure in heart will see God. Sight, interestingly, is also at the center of today’s Gospel reading. The blind lead the blind into a pit, and we notice the splinter in our brother’s eye but not the beam in our own. But that image showing the absurdity of hypocrisy also comes with an instruction and a promise: “Remove the wooden beam… then you will see clearly.”

Screens & Sacraments: a response

Last week I was pleased to take part in a conference organized by at the Gregorian University’s Faculty of History and Culture and the Institute of Liturgy at the University of Santa Croce entitled L’edificio di culto e gli artisti: A 25 anni dal primo Giubileo degli Artisti (2000-2025). The theme was church architecture and art over the past 25 years. The conference brought together an impressive group of international architects, artists, and theologians.

My own rather modest contribution was to extend the reflection I began in November’s issue of First Things on “Screens and Sacraments.” The talk seemed to produce a good deal of agreement that we need to be more discerning in how we allow technology to intrude on our sacred spaces.

On a related note, I was also happy to read a quite generous response to my article from Kevin Martin of Raleigh, North Carolina in the January 2025 issue of First Things. He reports being “strong-armed against [his] better judgement into Zooming the liturgy during the first year of the pandemic,” but eventually abandoning the practice because it felt wrong for many of the reasons I discussed in my article. He wonders, however, if I do not concede too much by suggesting that it might be OK to continue to broadcast the Liturgy of the Word, while stopping at the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

It’s a thoughtful question. I’d begin by saying that I am by no means arguing that one must broadcast any form of worship, and I have no quarrel with the decision of Rev. Martin’s church to give up streaming altogether. At the same time, I’m not an absolutist when it comes to technology, and some of the goods that people claim from broadcast Masses are real. Sick parishioners in particular can be helped to pray by seeing images of the liturgy online and comforted by the sight of their home church and familiar faces. These might supplement pastoral outreach to the homebound, without replacing it. I’m a little more skeptical about the evangelical or formative value of e-liturgy, since I think its appeal is mainly to those who have already been sufficiently formed by real liturgy.

The uniqueness of Christian Baptism: homily for the Baptism of the Lord

Homily for the Baptism of the Lord (C)

Baptism of the Lord from “Praznicar,” Romanian, 19th century

Today’s readings use some artful cinematography. Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. Our readings give us scenes before baptism and immediately after baptism, but they cut away so that we don’t see the baptisms. This montage of before and after shots nonetheless serves to highlight the uniqueness of Christian baptism. Luke cuts from John the Baptist’s preaching to Jesus praying after his baptism. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove and a voice from heaven speaks to the Lord. The scene is obviously meant to show approval for Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John.

The scene chosen today from Acts of the Apostles is also meant to put the stamp of divine approval on baptism. To understand Peter’s words in the house of Cornelius, we need to remember the whole context of the chapter in which they occur, Acts 10. The scene unfolds in the earliest days of the Church when there was still doubt about who could belong to the Church: was the message of Jesus directed only to Jews or were all people called to Christianity? In Acts 10, the centurion Cornelius—a Roman, not a Jew—receives a vision that prompts him to call Peter to his house. At the same time, Peter receives a vision in which he’s told to eat all of the animals that Jewish dietary laws consider forbidden. The vision was not a marketing ploy for the pork and shellfish industry, but instead it ensured that Peter didn’t hesitate to go to a Gentile’s house when Cornelius’s servants came to find him. At Cornelius’s house Peter preached the message that we hear today. The word was sent to the Israelites, he says, but it was intended, as Isaiah prophesied in the first reading, “to bring forth justice to the nations,” in other words, to extend beyond Israel itself.

What we unfortunately don’t read today is what happens next. As if anyone missed the first several hints, the Holy Spirit descends on the people in Cornelius’s house, who begin to speak in tongues, and Peter says, “Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people?” (Acts 10:47). God’s will is that baptism should be conferred on Gentiles as well as Jews and that all nations should enter the Church, even Roman centurions.

Now if you were a medieval theologian, who spent your days raising difficulties about sacramental theology, the story of Cornelius’s baptism might provoke another question: if the Holy Spirit had already descended on everyone in Cornelius’s household, why did they even need to be baptized? Isn’t getting the Holy Spirit the whole point of baptism? And once you’ve got the Holy Spirit, doesn’t the ceremony become redundant? If you remember from Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist himself poses a similar question about the baptism of Jesus. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says. “Why do you come to me?” (Matt 3:4).

The Holy Name of Jesus – and the Society that bears it

In the liturgical calendar of the Society of Jesus, January 3 is the Solemnity of the Holy Name of Jesus, our titular feast. Toward the end of his life, the great American Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles gave a lecture entitled “The Ignatian Charism at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century,” which I think is as relevant today as it was nearly two decades ago. Dulles’s gift as a theologian was to clarify complex issues and get at the heart of the matter. The talk can be found in the collection of Dulles’s McGinley Lectures given at Fordham, Church and Society. Here are the final three paragraphs in which Dulles reflects on the Jesuit charism today:

“The Society can be abreast of the times if it adheres to its original purpose and ideals. The term Jesuit is often misunderstood. Not to mention enemies for whom Jesuit is a term of opprobrium, friends of the Society sometimes identify the term with independence of thought and corporate pride, both of which Saint Ignatius deplored. Others reduce the Jesuit trademark to a matter of educational techniques, such as the personal care of students, concern for the whole person, rigor in thought, and eloquence of expression. These qualities are estimable and have a basis in the teaching of Saint Ignatius. But they omit any consideration of the fact that the Society of Jesus is an order of vowed religious in the Catholic Church. They are bound by special allegiance to the pope, the bishop of Rome. And above all, it needs to be mentioned that the Society of Jesus is primarily about a person: Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. If the Society were to lose its special devotion to the Lord (which, I firmly trust, will never happen) it would indeed be obsolete. It would be like salt that had lost its savor.

“The greatest need of the Society of Jesus, I believe, is to be able to project a clearer vision of its purpose. Its members are engaged in such diverse activities that its unity is obscured. In this respect the recent popes have rendered great assistance. Paul VI helpfully reminded Jesuits that they are are religious order, not a secular institute; that they are a priestly order, not a lay association; that they are apostolic, not monastic, and that they are bound to obedience to the pope, not wholly self-directed.

“Pope John Paul II, in directing the Jesuits to engage in the new evangelization, identified a focus that perfectly matches the founding idea of the Society. Ignatius was adamant in insisting that it be named for Jesus, its true head. The Spiritual Exercises are centered on the Gospels. Evangelization is exactly what the first Jesuits did as they conducted missions in the towns of Italy. They lived lives of evangelical poverty. Evangelization was the sum and substance of what Saint Francis Xavier accomplished in his arduous missionary journeys. And evangelization is at the heart of all Jesuit apostolates in teaching, in research, in spirituality, and in the social apostolate. Evangelization, moreover, is what the world most sorely needs today. The figure of Jesus Christ in the Gospels has not lost its attraction. Who should be better qualified to present that figure today than members of the Society that bears his name?”

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.

November 29, 2006

Look East! Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (C)

“Look to my coming,” Gandolf tells Aragorn in the second installment of the Lord of the Ringstrilogy, The Two Towers. “At dawn on the fifth day, look east.” Those familiar with the story, know that Gandolf’s words come at a particularly dramatic moment in the epic, when the last holdouts of Rohan—one of the two remaining kingdoms of men not to succumb to the forces of evil—have retreated to their mountain stronghold, Helms Deep, and the walls of the fortress have begun to crumble, its gates to give way, and its doors to crack under the onslaught of a massive army sent by the turncoat wizard Saruman, who, seduced by power, has joined the forces of darkness. And as Aragorn, the king in exile, prepares for one final charge with what knights remain, he remembers the words of the faithful wizard Gandolf, who had left five days before to seek aid. “At dawn on the fifth day, look east.”

We read a similar instruction in the Book of Baruch, directed to the holy city, “Up, Jerusalem! Stand upon the heights; look to the east.” These words are echoed in the Advent hymn familiar to many of us, “People, Look East.” There is something primordial in this call, in the instinct to look in hope to the east. When I worked among the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota, I learned that in their traditional religion, east was the direction of prayer. I found some Lakota Christians very insistent on a Christian tradition—which I did not know about—of burying the dead facing east. The Christian tradition of prayer facing east goes back to the first centuries. St. Ambrose talks about catechumens, after their baptism, turning from the west to the east as a sign of the new orientation of their lives.

The Art of Waiting: Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello, Venice

Homily for the First Sunday of Advent (C)

One of the casualties of the smartphone revolution has been losing our ability to wait. Instead of waiting, we scroll. Losing the ability to wait may not seem a real loss, but I think it is. Scrolling and checking messages and adding new apps has not made me more productive. Instead, I’m more easily distracted and impatient. Inside our electronic cocoons, we miss the things that used to happen while we waited—people watching, striking up conversations, noticing the landscape from the window, wondering at it.

Today’s readings are about the art of waiting. But they warn us not to romanticize it. Times of waiting can be dangerous. Today’s Gospel identifies two dangers of waiting: anxiety and drowsiness.

The anxieties mentioned in the Gospel come from genuinely terrifying world events—“people will die of fright,” the Gospel warns—but also everyday anxieties that seem related to drowsiness. The context of today’s readings, of course, is the Lord’s second coming, when Jesus will return in awesome and awful judgment, remaking all reality. It may be that some of us are anxious about meeting Jesus because we’re afraid of that judgment. Paul warns the Thessalonians to conduct themselves to please God, as they have been taught. Advent is a time when the Church reminds us to examine our consciences, to make use of the sacrament of penance, to align our lives with Jesus’ teaching.

Launched: book, articles, interview

Baptism of Desire and Christian Salvation is now in orbit after an excellent turnout at the official book launch at the Gregorian last Thursday. More good news: the code CT10 still gives you a 20% discount if ordering the book directly from Catholic University of America Press. At the presentation of the book, Fr. Joseph Carola gave an overview of its content and shared some stories from personal experience to illustrate its pastoral relevance. Fr. Bob Imbelli drew on other contemporary thinkers, such as Khaled Anatolios, Charles Taylor, and William Cavanaugh to demonstrate its relevance. I hope to have video of the presentations up on the Baptism of Desire page soon.

Fr. Joseph Carola, S.J., Fr. Robert Imbelli, Fr. Anthony Lusvardi, S.J.

Just a week before, I was also pleased to talk about the book with my old friend Sean Salai at Catholic World Report. Read the interview here: Defending the necessity of baptism: An interview with Fr. Anthony Lusvardi, S.J.

On another note, in this month’s First Things I return to an issue I raised a few years ago in an article in America magazine, the effects of technology on the liturgy. Here’s the new article: “Screens and Sacraments.” The original from 2020 is here.

And, finally, if you’re looking for some pre-election reading that isn’t about either Donald or Kamala, but instead about the way voting functions as a civic ritual, check out my latest at The Catholic Thing: “Rites (and Wrongs) of Democracy.“

Homily for the Feast of St. Ignatius

The feast of St. Ignatius was back in July, of course, but I thought the reflections on discernment in my homily might be helpful in any season. Last year, I was asked for some thoughts on the process of communal discernment used by the Synod on Synodality. These reflections build on those observations.

Inigo the Pilgrim (2017), Church of St. Ignatius, Norwood, South Australia

You might have had the experience of the warning light on your dashboard coming on while you’re driving, signaling that you are low on gas, near the minimum. Here in South Dakota especially–where outside of the city gas stations can be few and far between–you don’t want to fall below that minimum. You might end up out in the cold or in this merciless heat—both dangerous circumstances—and in need of a good Samaritan to rescue you.

If you keep your tank filled, however, and don’t fall below the minimum, you can drive wherever you like. You just plug the destination into the GPS and go.

The warning light and the GPS are both helpful, but they serve different functions—the warning light tells us not to drop below the minimum and the GPS gives us directions. The readings for today’s feast of St. Ignatius, I think, point to a way of living the Christian faith that goes beyond the minimum.

If we think about the commandments, they are very useful for giving us the minimal rules of the road necessary to avoid an accident or a breakdown by the roadside. Because of this function, most of the commandments are written in a negative form—“Thou shall not…” Even those that aren’t prohibitions—“Keep holy the Sabbath” and “Honor thy father and mother”—set a minimum of necessary behaviors. Sunday Mass is the minimum necessary worship if we are to do justice to God, and fulfilling our family duties is the minimum necessary social obligation if we’re to maintain a functional social harmony.

But just doing the minimum isn’t enough to live a fulfilling life or to live a life of discipleship. If I put on my to-do list for tomorrow, “Don’t kill anyone, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal,” I’ll end up rather bored. The minimum tells us what to avoid, but not much of what to do.