Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

And Jesus wept.


These three words are a pivot point in the Gospel passage we hear today.  A pivot point between Jesus prophesying about the resuscitation of Lazarus, prophesying about the promise of eternal life for His believers, and testifying to His Divine nature as the Resurrection and the Life.  A pivot point between Christ’s prophecy and testimony and Christ acting in His Divine nature as God the Son, calling Lazarus out of the sleep of death, out of the tomb, resuscitating him to life.  And in that pivot point, in those three words — “And Jesus wept” — is the fullness of the humanity of Christ. 


For we profess a God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is fully Divine and fully human.  And what could be more human than to weep? Biblical scholars note that the word “wept,” translated from the original Greek term, in this Gospel means literally that he burst into tears; he is sobbing.  It is not the same Greek term used to describe the weeping of Mary and Martha, which is translated as crying and wailing aloud.  Jesus’ is a more quiet grief expressed by a profuse flowing of tears. In His incarnation Jesus took on flesh to become one of us, fully human — and there may be no more profound expression of Jesus’ humanity than his sobbing at the tomb of Lazarus.  Psalm 116 tells us that “Dear in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his devoted one” (Ps 116:15). What more dear, more sincere way could God express his love for us than to weep for His beloved, to weep for us?


There was a very popular 1970s television war comedy-drama called M*A*S*H. Most of us here today know and remember that television series well; some of us grew up with it. For those of you who have never heard of M*A*S*H, it was a series set in the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital — hence M*A*S*H— operating in the early 1950s in Korea during the Korean War.  It was humorous, punctuated with the quick verbal wit of Drs. Hawkeye Pierce, Trapper John McIntyre, and BJ Hunnicutt — and, at the same time, it was also poignant, laying bare the suffering of humanity — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — amidst the tragedy of war.  In one episode, the 4077th receives a wounded soldier with a superficial head wound who has no dog tags.  When asked what his identity is, the soldier responds that he is Jesus Christ, and continues to insist so in a calm manner to all who approach and ask him in the hospital ward. 


The staff learn through Army intelligence that this man was a highly decorated bombardier named Captain Arnold Chandler, a farm boy from Idaho who had flown over 50 bombing missions in North Korea before his B-29 bomber was shot down.  Believing this man might be deeply wounded psychologically, the 4077th doctors bring in the Army psychiatrist Major Sidney Freedman to evaluate him.  In the poignant exchange between Dr. Freedman and the man, Sidney asks the man how long he has known his true identity, that of Arnold Chandler, and then goes on to give him a short synopsis of his life and military career.  The man responds to a series of questions, stating that he is not Captain Chandler, that he is not from Idaho, and that he is not a bombardier and gently insists, “I am Christ the Lord.”  Sidney, going along with the new identity, counters by saying, “But you died,” to which the man responds, “I rose”. Sidney replies, “That was a long time ago. Where have you been since then?”  The man responds, “I live on in all [mankind].”  Sidney then asks, “What are you doing here in an army hospital?”  The man responds, “I’m Christ. Where should I be?”  Countering the man’s question, Sidney asks further, “Should you be in the nose of a B-29, dropping bombs?”  The man responds, “Bombs.  On people?”  At this, the expression on the man’s face becomes troubled.  Sidney replies, “On the enemy,” to which the man responds, “I have no enemies.  I love all men.”  Sidney counters, asking “Even the North Koreans?”  The man looks up, away from Sidney, tears welling in his eyes; now deeply troubled, he says, “They’re my children. Why would I hurt my children?”  A tear runs down his cheek.


And Jesus wept.


Do you suppose Jesus Christ, our Resurrected and Ascended, fully Divine and still fully Human Lord, weeps today?


Does He weep for his children who fight and destroy, who suffer, hurting and killing each other today?


I suppose He does.


Jesus is wounded and suffers in and through his Body, that is, all of us, through whom he lives on.  All of us, made in the image and likeness of God.  We, who are God’s handiwork.  We, who are God’s creation. 


O Jesus, may your grief and weeping give us to know that the actions of humanity hurt you.  May the well-spring of your tears be the living waters that extinguish our thirst for anger, animosity, revenge, and violence.  May they be the waters that wash away our blindness, healing us, reviving us to life again.  May the tears that well up from your eyes wash over us like the waters that flowed from your side upon the Cross.  And may your tears fall upon us like the rains of the Great Flood, flow over us like the waters of baptism, and make an end of our vice and a new beginning of our virtue. 


And Jesus weeps.

Third Sunday of Easter, Year A

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 19, 2026
The Road to Emmaus is a metaphor and model for the Christian life. The two disciples gather. They come together. They gather in spite of the fact that they are struggling with their faith in Jesus. They look downcast when they encounter Jesus (whom they do not recognize.) Their words betray their struggling faith and lost hope: “we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel”. As Christians we too gather today. We gather out of faith and in hope. And, if we are honest with ourselves, we gather because of our struggles with our faith and hope. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, it is important that we come together, we come into communion with each other, because it’s in the midst of that gathering, that communion, that God becomes present in our midst to strengthen our faith and give us hope, in Him and through one another. There is another very practical and important reason for us to gather as disciples of Christ. You see, the one thing about the road to Emmaus, the road of our faith journey, is that there are potholes! We walk together in this journey of faith just as Jesus sent his disciples together to minister. We look out for each other, watching out for the potholes in the Road of Faith to Emmaus, to warn each other, to help each other around those potholes, and to help lift each other with God’s help out of those potholes. We walk the Road to Emmaus in response to God who calls us to follow this road, planting the seeds of desire in us to follow this road, walking with each other , that we might encourage each other — and ourselves — to stay on that road. This spiritual companionship is critical. Now, as the disciples travel the road to Emmaus, they encounter the Risen Christ. Though they don’t recognize Jesus yet, Christ — God the Word — makes scripture present to them, and breaks it open for them, interpreting all that the prophets had written about him. We too, as gathered disciples today, have the Word of God made present to us through the readers who, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, give their voice to the breath of the Spirit in proclaiming that Word in our midst. Just as with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus makes himself present here in our midst through the proclaimed Word! Do we experience the scripture proclaimed to us in each Mass, each Children’s Liturgy of the Word, each time we pray the Liturgy of the Hours, each scripture study, each What About Monday , Cursillo, and Men’s faith sharing group, recognizing Jesus present in our midst, our God who is walking with us on our Road to Emmaus faith journey? Are our hearts burning within us when we hear the Word proclaimed? Though fed by Jesus the Word on the road to Emmaus, it is only in the breaking of the bread that the disciples finally come to recognize Christ in their midst. And how powerful and how much is in that action of breaking bread. Just as when Jesus feeds the 5,000, just as when he gathers with the disciples in the upper room at the Last Supper, just as when he gathers at table with the disciples in Emmaus, he takes the bread , says the blessing , breaks the bread , and gives it to them. The fact that Jesus chooses to reveal himself to the disciples in Emmaus in the breaking of the bread tells us that he wants us too to recognize Him today in the breaking of the bread. In a few moments, those same four actions of Christ will again be made present to us today in the priest, Fr. Chris, who will take the bread from the gift bearers, bless the bread in the Eucharistic prayer, break the bread in the fractionation rite, and give it to us as Eucharist in Communion. Ah, that we would have our eyes opened to recognize Christ, the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary! To see Christ present, not only in the broken bread, the Eucharist, but equally important and perhaps more challenging, in one another! What happened next to the disciples at Emmaus confounds us a bit, for the Lord, who wishes that he be made known in the breaking of the bread, disappears from their sight. What are we to make of this? St. Augustine gives us insight when he wrote: He withdrew from them in the body, since he was held by them [now] in faith. That indeed is why the Lord absented himself in the body from the whole Church, and ascended into heaven, for the building up of faith. After all, if you only know what you can see, where does faith come in? But if you also believe what you cannot see, when you do see it you will rejoice. Let faith be built up, because it will be paid back with sight. (1) Sisters and brothers, we walk this road of the journey of faith, our Road to Emmaus, together. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we walk it together with the Lord, whether we recognize Him in our midst or not. It is a journey of a lifetime, lived day-to-day and experienced often daily, as a journey from dark to light, from despair to hope, from unbelief to belief. It is a journey we walk by faith, and not by sight, no gracious words we hear, as Him who spoke as none e'er spoke, and we believe him near. (2) (1) St. Augustine, sermon 235 in Sermons , trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., The Works of St. Augustine III/7 (New Rochelle NY: New City Press, 1993) (2) We Walk by Faith : text by Henry Alford (alt.), tune by Marty Haugen. ©1984, 2006, GIA Publications, Inc. 

Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy), Year A

By Fr. Christopher Welch • April 12, 2026
It is said that when Oliver Cromwell had his official portrait painted, he asked that it be a true portrait with “warts and all”. You may say that the resurrected Christ appeared with “wounds and all”. Here is the resurrected Christ in his glorified body, who could pass through locked doors, appearing with the wounds of his crucifixion. He is resurrected, not simply resuscitated, in his glorified body still bearing the marks of his passion and death. Why, if he is in his perfect resurrected body, does Jesus still bear the marks of his passion and death? It is an interesting paradox that the woundedness of our lives can be what makes us who we are. There is a story told about a man in therapy: When he first met the counselor, he was asked to draw a picture of himself; he drew a picture of a vase with a crack in its side. After many years of therapy, the counselor showed the man the picture he had drawn. The man asked for use of the crayons. He took a yellow crayon and drew yellow strips just above the crack in the vase. When asked why he did that he told the counselor, “The crack is where the light can get in.” Leonard Cohen summed it up well in his song “Anthem”: There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. By showing the apostles his wounds, Jesus is reminding them that the wounds, the pain is not the end of the story. Many of us bear wounds from our past; they are what make us who we are. Part of the journey is the struggle. When we reach our destination, we can look back and see how the struggles made us who we are. Elbert Hubbard, the founder of the Roycrofters, once said, “God will not look you over for medals but for scars.” I am sure the disciples looked over the past three years and saw how the struggles made a difference; their time with Jesus made them new people.

The Great Easter Vigil, Year A

By Deacon Paul Cerosaletti • April 4, 2026
Growing up on the family dairy farm, there were many difficult things we experienced. Certainly, there was much hard, physical labor. But among the hardest things we experienced was caring for sick animals, and in particular, caring for cows that had been injured or lost muscle strength and were unable to get themselves up to a standing position. This typically would happen around the time of calving and might be due to a nerve injury during birth or mineral and metabolic imbalances that affected muscle strength. We called them “down cows”. What was so hard about dealing with down cows was really two things: one, the size of the animals — often 1000 lbs. or more — made it difficult, if not impossible, for us to help them physically if they had little or no muscle strength of their own. Secondly, and more profound, was the emotional burden that weighed upon us as their caregivers. We wanted them to get better and be back on their feet. We loved our animals, as all farmers do, and we wanted the best for them. Although we could help them with support therapies and medicine with help from our veterinarian and made sure they had feed and water at all times, it felt like there was only so much in our control. And the longer a cow was down, the less likely it would be that she would ever rise again. Some never did. That outcome happened frequently enough that it was a real possibility. And there is nothing that was more discouraging for us as farmers than a cow we could not help to get better. It cast a pall over our days and robbed us of hope and joy — really, robbing us of life — replacing them instead with weary discouragement. Late one Lent going into Holy Week, we had one of these down cows. It was a year not unlike this one, with the signs of spring beginning to emerge in early April. My father used to say the best thing we could do for a down cow was to get her out of the barn and out onto the earth in the fields or pasture, where there was no concrete and better footing. So we did, and we were able to get this cow out of the barn and into the hayfield behind the barn. There, day after day, we would take her food and water, administer medicine to her, and roll her over from side to side, to make sure she did not lose circulation in one hindquarter or another. If she seemed like she wanted to get up, we would try to get enough people to see if we could help her get up. Although she ate and drank, she did not get up, and as Holy Week wore on, it felt like she wasn’t going to. That discouragement set in as a constant droning undertone to everything we did throughout the day, seemingly getting louder with each passing day. Whether we were thinking about that down cow consciously or not, it seemed to affect our outlook and demeanor in everything we did. Late one night that week, my father, brother and I were finishing evening milking. It was after dark; we were at the far end of the barn, near the door going out to the hayfield. As I came out from between two cows holding the milking machine, I turned towards the open barn door and was shocked when I found myself face to face with the previously down cow, standing there, head poked in the barn door, chewing her cud! I shouted to my father, “Dad, she’s up!” We all ran over to the barn door, peering into the darkness of that night to see this risen cow. I will never forget what my father said next, turning to us and smiling: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised.” In that instant our demeanor changed. The discouragement was gone and we were filled with joy and hope. There was a lightness in our step as we finished chores that night and the following days. We knew the end of the story, and this illness was not to end in death. Everything was going to be OK! I have to imagine our Passion and Easter experience on the farm those many years ago was something of what the disciples experienced when they encountered the empty tomb, the message of the angels, and ultimately the Risen Christ. I have to imagine that joy and hope that we felt that night was some small measure of the joy and hope that filled and animated them when they encountered the Risen Christ, whom they deeply loved and who deeply loved them. They finally knew the end of the story, and came to know that it did not end with death. Brothers and sisters, we too have the benefit of knowing the end of the story. We too know that it does not end in death, but in Christ triumphing over death, not only for himself, but also for us! It is this rising to new life that we celebrate in every Mass, in every Eucharist, in every Sacrament, and especially tonight, as we celebrate with our Elect their rising to new life with Christ in the waters of Baptism. So let us be filled with Easter joy and hope, as we should be, for we know the end of the story: He has Risen, He has Truly Risen, and we with Him!