Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (B)

A little over a month ago, I made my first ever visit to New Orleans, Louisiana.  I have had a kind of love affair with New Orleans ever since I wrote my undergraduate thesis on one of the heroic archbishops of that city.  And of course, I’ve also been emotionally attached to New Orleans because of the Holy Cross history in that city.

But I never made it down for a visit before Hurricane Katrina struck the city, and afterwards I frankly wondered how much of the city’s tradition and charm would survive.

Indeed, throughout my visit to New Orleans there were any number of times when the specter of Katrina hung over a site I was seeing or a conversation I was having.  You can’t go very far in New Orleans without seeing or hearing something that marks time and change by reference to that terrible event.

But after spending my week visiting historical sites, eating fabulous food, listening to wonderful jazz music, and even attending a few (family friendly) Mardi Gras parades, I can tell you that the city is doing quite well.

I was struck by the determination and resolve that New Orleanians have shown, and are continuing to display, in resuming their lives and rebuilding their city.  In particular I was struck by several stories I heard about the first Mardi Gras season after the storm. 

After seeing first-hand just how much fun and celebration goes into Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I couldn’t imagine how so many of the parade organizers, who would themselves have lost property and maybe even loved ones, could have wanted to celebrate during that first season back.

What I was told, though, was that most of the krewes had even greater enthusiasm for Mardi Gras than usual, because in the midst of their trial and suffering, it was a reminder of joy and a much-needed celebration of life.  I suppose in light of your assembly theme, we might say that these New Orleanians were participating in an uprising of hope!

Well, here we are halfway through our Lenten observance.  If we’ve been taking this season of repentance seriously, we’ve been enduring the admittedly small suffering of no chocolate, or no wine, or whatever sacrifice we’ve made.  And we should also have been examining our conscience, and frankly coming to a greater awareness of our own weakness and sinfulness. 

Today’s responsorial Psalm, sung by the Israelites while they were in bondage in Babylon, captures some sense of the despondency we might be tempted to feel as we face suffering and sin.  We might find ourselves sitting, weeping, unable to rise, to sing of, or believe in, God’s love for us.

But Lent’s spirit of confession and penance is not at all meant to make us despondent.  Even in our weakness and sinfulness we are never without the hope of God’s mercy and forgiveness.  And so even in the midst of Lent, like those Mardi Gras revelers after Hurricane Katrina, the Church gives us this Laetare – or Rejoice – Sunday; an uprising of hope to remind us of joy and to reaffirm life! 

Our readings are all strong reminders of how God’s mercy and love raise us up from despondency and despair and restore us to hope and the fullness of life.  They all comfort us with the assurance that no matter what the circumstance of our lives, we can have the confidence and joy that comes from knowing our God goes with us.

In our first reading from the Book of Chronicles, we hear of God ending Israel’s captivity in Babylon.  Despite the people’s sinfulness, and the destruction it necessarily led to, God had remained ever faithful to Israel.  All the while He was preparing His people’s salvation – and so just as Jeremiah had foretold, King Cyrus of Persia releases Israel from bondage and begins to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

“Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of His people,” Cyrus declares, “let him go up, and may his God be with him.”

Our Gospel and our second reading make clear that this is precisely what has happened for us through Christ Jesus.  We too have been lifted up, we have been restored to life by God’s merciful love, and we too encounter Him along the way because He has gone up with us!

St. Paul reminds the Ephesians: “Even when we were dead in our transgressions, God brought us to life with Christ, raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens.”

In the Gospel, Jesus reminds Nicodemus of Israel’s forty years in the desert, and how the deadly seraph serpents attacked the people.  God told Moses to make a bronze serpent, mount it on a pole and raise it up before the people.  And whoever looked on it did not die, but lived.

And so Jesus says of Himself: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.”

Dear sisters, in Christ God has stooped down – has joined us in the realm of suffering and death, precisely so that He might raise us up with Himself to new life.  When He is nailed to, and physically raised up on the Cross, it is precisely in the moment of suffering and seeming defeat that He in fact triumphs over sin and death and is spiritually raised up to glory by His heavenly Father.  The dual meaning of “raised up” is quite purposeful!

And since, by Baptism, we have been incorporated into and made a part of the body of Christ, we know that He is with us in every trial we face – in all of our suffering – and He raises us up with Himself to new life and joy.

Perhaps the greatest thing I did while I was in New Orleans was to visit our Holy Cross School.  You all know that in the early years of that mission our community in New Orleans was devastated by cholera, yellow fever, and malaria. The city suffered under the Union blockade during the Civil War and more than once the community considered withdrawing from the city.

And again in 2005 withdrawing seemed almost certain when Hurricane Katrina devastated the original campus and buildings of the school.  But just a few years later here I was touring the school’s brand new campus and meeting some of its students, who now number almost as many as they did before the storm.

And the headmaster, Charlie DiGange, showed me the posters they had made explaining to all who walk the halls of that school, how it is that they were able to accomplish such a miraculous rebirth.  The posters very simply show the face of our Holy Founder, and reprint what he wrote to the New Orleans community in the late 1850s:

“I have followed your progress in mind and heart all along and if there is one place in which I am deeply interested, and for which I have great affection, it is most certainly New Orleans. This place has experienced various kinds of hardships from the day of its foundation, but that is proof that it will also become a place of great blessing.”

Dear Sisters, this is what it means to have an uprising of hope!  This is what it means to celebrate Laetare Sunday!  In the midst of Lent, in the midst of whatever crosses we may carry, we celebrate the fact that “by grace, we have been saved through faith.”  We renew our confidence that we been raised up to glory with Christ, just as surely as we have been raised up with Him on the cross. 

And so in this Eucharist we now make our thanksgiving to God who “so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

This homily was given at the regional Assembly for the Sisters of the Holy Cross at the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland.  Once I finish comprehensive exams I might actually get around to posting some pictures and stories from the fabulous trip I reference in the homily!