HOMILY FEAST of SAINTS PHILIP AND JAMES
Through the Apostles to Jesus and the Father
(1 Cor 15:1-8; Ps 18; Jn 14:6-14)
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“It is just as important to feed people with the Word of God as it is to feed them with the Body and Blood of Jesus.”
That quote is from Catherine Doherty in her book The People of the Towel and Water. It presents us with a divine pattern: we are a Church built on the teachings of the Apostles, who lead us to Jesus, who in turn leads us to the Father.
We are a Church built upon the foundation stones of the Apostles. In Chennai, India, we can go to the tomb of St. Thomas who evangelized India and was martyred there. In Rome we can visit the tomb of St. Peter at the Vatican. In the Church of St. Paul Outside the Walls, we can celebrate the Eucharist where Paul was beheaded. And in Jerusalem, we can pray in the Upper Room or Cenacle where Jesus may have gathered with the apostles for the Last Supper.
Today we celebrate the Apostles Philip and James. According to the Living With Christ, Philip and James were apostles of Jesus. The choice of Philip as a disciple is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke. John’s Gospel records several conversations between Jesus and Philip, which demonstrates he was present throughout the Lord’s public ministry. James, son of Alphaeus (called ‘James the Less’ because he was younger then the apostle James) is mentioned in Mark and Acts, and is the author of the canonical epistle. According to historians, he was a Christian of high repute and died a martyr’s death by stoning about the year 62. Both men are patron saints of hatters; St. Philip is also patron of pastry chefs, while St. James is a patron of druggists.
In the gospel, Philip makes that all important and perennial request of Jesus, “Let us see the Father.” Jesus responds by saying to see him is to see the Father, for he and the Father are one. Jesus is grounded in the Father’s love. He is always in communion with the Father, so much so that to come to him is to come to the Father.
In the first reading from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul puts our focus on the gospel he preached. He takes pains to stress that Jesus died, was buried and rose from the dead. Perhaps he intuited that the physical reality of the resurrection would be a contentious issue from that time on. There are many who argue that perhaps the resurrection was simply a faith event inside the consciousness of believers and not a physical event where an actual body came out of a grave.
What I also greatly appreciate in this passage from Corinthians, is that Paul highlights what I all the missing mystery – the appearance of Jesus to his followers after his resurrection. We skip over it in the glorious mysteries (Resurrection then Ascension), the creed (“he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven”) and in the third canon of the Eucharist (“his wondrous Resurrection and Ascension into heaven). Yet it is an important and significant stretch of forty days during which Jesus taught his followers about the kingdom of God (Acts 1) and I believe, was teaching them to mourn and grieve his loss. They could not have him back as he was before, because he had risen to a new and glorious life that he wanted to share with them (and us) spiritually if they would let him ascend to the Father. That is why he told Mary Magdalene “do not cling to me” when he appeared to her. St. Paul does us a favor as he recounts that Jesus appeared to Cephas, then the twelve, then 500 disciples, to James, to all the apostles, and finally, to Paul himself as one untimely born.
Ron Rolheiser OMI, in one of his articles, claims that for the resurrection of Christ to have full meaning, it must be a “brute physical fact.” The reason for that, he argues, is the incarnation. As he puts it, “To believe in the incarnation is to believe that God was born into real physical flesh, lived in real physical flesh, died in real physical flesh, and rose in real physical flesh. To believe that the resurrection was only an event in the faith consciousness of the disciples, however real, rich and radical that might be imagined, is to rob the incarnation of its radical physical character and to fall into the kind of dualism that values spirit and denigrates the physical. Such a dualism devalues the incarnation and this impoverishes the meaning of the resurrection.” It also makes the resurrection only an anthropological one and not also a cosmic one that affects all of creation.
To read St. Paul, and to read the Gospels, the writings of the apostles, is to get to know and experience Jesus, who appeared to Philip and James, and the rest of the apostles, as well as to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. To immerse ourselves in the Gospels is to be drawn into the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. It is to come to Jesus, who in turn leads us to the Father.
So there we have it. As we celebrate the Eucharist today, which is a union of the Liturgy of the Word of the Apostles, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist that comes to us from apostolic times – the Body and Blood of Jesus, let us pray that our love for the Word of God will take us to the apostles, who in turn will lead us to Jesus, who in turn will show us the Father.
And may we be sent out from this liturgy to spread the Good News of this divine pattern in our lives.
