Faith-Heaven-Blessed Catherine of St. Augustine

HOMILY EASTER SEASON WEEK 04 05 – Year II

Homecoming – A Place For Us All:

Optional Memorial of Blessed Catherine of St. Augustine

(Acts 13:26-33; Ps 2; Jn 14:1-6)

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A Place For Us is a song in the opera West Side Story that resonates with the gospel today in which we are assured Jesus gives us a home with the Father – all we have to do is believe in him, and live his teachings.

In writing about the stages of our lives, Ron Rolheiser OMI teaches we are raised in a home; driven out of that home by puberty to establish a home of our own, and finally, prepared for a final homecoming by the aging process. It is all about coming back home – being at home.

In the gospel, Jesus not only assures us of an eternal home, but also informs us he is personally going ahead of us to prepare a place with the Father for us. Popular songs about home are archetypal. Humanity’s longing for a place, a home, is also archetypal and cross-cultural. Home is about eternal life, serenity, rest. At its deepest, our home is in the heart of the Trinity. That is why Jesus asks us to believe both in God the Father, and in him – the Son of God, the Word made flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit.

This reality of an eternal home is very much part of the good news Jesus shares with us. It is striking that as Jesus himself is facing the prospect of horrendous suffering and an agonizing death by crucifixion the next day, he calmly tells his apostles, “Do not be afraid – do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus is so grounded and secure in the Father’s love for him, he could calmly and with great dignity, especially in the gospel of John, freely give his life for us – so we could have that eternal home with him and the Father. This serene attitude of Jesus in the face of his own death is reassuring – he is with us in the most chaotic and stressful moments of our life, such as the present Covid-19 pandemic. We can truly say with Julien of Norwich, “All will be well, and all will be well, and in the end, all manner of being will be well.”

I believe I had a glimpse of that eternal home when visiting a friend and his wife one day. Their fifteen-year old daughter, returning from a soccer tournament, barged in the house, threw down her equipment bag, made a beeline straight to her father, jumped on his lap, put her arm around his neck and rested her head against his. He calmly kept on talking to me over her, while his wife continued preparing the meal and her siblings continued playing in the living room.

I felt warm all over, deeply moved, and my heart touched as I left this tender scene. It dawned on me I had come as close as I ever will in this life to seeing God with these eyes, in that intimate relationship of a father, daughter and close-knit family. That is what we are all longing for and what Jesus is preparing for us, forever.

There is much irony in the first reading. The whole Old Testament is a preparation for the coming of Jesus as the Messiah who would inaugurate his reign among us – bring heaven to us here on earth and open the door to that eternal home here and now, at least partially. How regrettable the very ones who should have been most receptive and most prepared to welcome him with open hearts and arms, in the words of St. Paul, “did not recognize him and did not understand the words of the prophets they read every sabbath.”

How marvellous that in God’s mysterious unfolding of God’s plan for salvation, God was able to use their very resistance and rejection to not only fulfill those words by the crucifixion of Jesus, but also to fulfill all the promises God made throughout the Old Testament, by raising Jesus from the dead.

Our task is to do our part to help realize this reign of God, this sharing in our eternal home, here and now, on earth. We are to believe in God, trust in Jesus, and live out his teachings of love, healing and forgiveness.

One of the unsung Canadian heroes who lived out these readings was Blessed Catherine of St. Augustine. Born Catherine de Longpré in France, she entered the convent of a branch of the Augustinians, the first order to send missionaries to Canada. In 1648 she asked to go to Quebec City to help the sisters in the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the first established in Canada. She worked with the poor through famine, conflict and illness, and was graced with several mystical experiences. What stood out for the people, though, was her kindness and great love for them. She battled poor health all her life and died in 1668 at the age of 36. Counted among the founders of the Canadian Church, she was beatified in 1989.

The Eucharist gathers us around the altar for a family meal, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet in our eternal home.  It is a meal of amazing grace, a miracle of faith in which we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus and in turn, are transformed into the Body of Christ.

It also sends us out, believing in our Trinitarian God, to live out the Eucharist as the Body of Christ through love, forgiveness and healing, inviting all we meet to join us in our final homecoming.