The Power of Christ's Resurrection
Summary of Headings
Christ's Self-Resurrection
Come Holy Ghost, you are faithful to this season of Easter. We remember Jesus Christ died on the cross to satisfy the debt of sin. And after having satisfied the debt of sin, according to the Bible, the providence, God the Father's instruction is to him, Jesus was obedient to his Father, we say, even unto the death of the cross. Because he satisfied this way, by his obedience to God the Father, so he was raised again from the dead. And he did it of his own power. We've heard of other things. We've heard of the Holy Spirit. We've heard of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
Lazarus didn't raise himself from the dead. Jesus raised him. Others that have been raised from the dead by saints, and Jesus raised the son of the widow of name from the dead, these were raised by others, but Jesus raised himself from the dead. By his own power. And his own decision. And he even said it before he died. He said to his enemies, those that accused him, you are not the Messiah. You're making this up. They were accusing Jesus. And he answered them and said, the son of man, he speaks of himself, calls himself the son of man, because he's really a man.
The son of man has power to lay down his life. He's a man. And he has the power to take it up again. And so when our Lord laid down his life, he gave up the ghost on purpose. According to the obedience he owed to his father. And when it was time for him to rise again from the dead, it is his own. Deed. He raised himself up from the dead. And so he shows everyone who's going to be honest enough to take this for what it means. That he's God and man. And that he is the true Messiah. And that there is no other. But he did these things. And he did these things.
As he told his apostles, as an example, when he had washed their feet at the Last Supper,
The Example of Charity
he said, I have given you an example so that as you have seen me do for you, you should do for each other. And the washing of the feet is, I think, the first sign of charity. To do little favors for each other. Do little good deeds. Do little good deeds for each other. This is a sign of that you care for the other person. That you do something for them. And this charity is always something that comes out of us to others. When we speak of someone who's a narcissist, you know, what's the problem with a narcissist? Is he loves himself. And not. Others. This Greek God, Narcissus, he saw his reflection in a pool of water and took such great delight in himself and his own appearance.
He ended up drowning in that same pool of water. So he destroyed himself by what? Excessive. Excessive self -love, which is a kind of a false self -love. There is a true self -love. And it's said by Saint Paul, he who loves his wife loves himself. For what? There's a unity between husband and wife. And giving ourselves to our spouse in the right kind of ways. This is an act of care for the other one. Exactly. And yet in the case of a married couple, it's also an act of care for yourself. Because you make your life so much better by being good to each other. And it's not just for husbands and wives.
He who shows charity towards his neighbor is showing charity to Jesus. Jesus who identifies himself with you. He who shows his love for you. And he says, whatever you do to the least of my brethren, that's what you do to me. And so in being good to other people, we are truly being good to Jesus. And that's a little bit different than just caring about ourselves. Now we're showing care for others. And now we look at the human condition. After original sin. When we're little babies. This is how it all starts. We're born one day. You call it your birthday now. And the anniversary of your birthday.
And you're born. And you come from your mother a little baby. And little babies, they don't do anything for anybody. I think that's why they're so cute. We won't kill them. They need everybody around them to do lots and lots of favors for them. And so when we're little babies, it's unfortunate for us that we're so self -centered. We're not doing anything for anybody. And everybody else is coming and basically kissing our feet or some other part of our anatomy. And we're not going to do anything. Now, as the baby grows older, it's the job of its own parents first and foremost to teach the baby to be thoughtful about the needs of the people around it.
The baby has to learn to do things for others. And that's how we learn. That's the point. And when we start to develop this as a habit, that we habitually care for the people around us, it's a very essential element of maturity. You might say about someone who's never learned to care for their neighbors in the right kind of ways and in the right measure, you might say easily these people are immature. We all start out that way, but we're not supposed to keep that from now on. We're supposed to become mature. And we start maturing by realizing I may be the center of my world, but I am definitely not the center of the world.
There's more to this world than just me. And I began to learn and teach myself and make it a concept. And I began to learn and teach myself and make it a constant habit to look after the needs of the people around me. In the right manner, the right measure, the right way. No, nothing inappropriate. But to do all the good things for our neighbors that other people should be doing that too. The right kind of care. In the gospel we have the two great commandments. The one is that we love God with all. With all of our heart and our soul and our mind and our strength.
And the second one that we love our neighbor as ourself. And so the first one and the most important is that we love God. And it doesn't just happen automatically.
The Call to Love God
In fact, someone has to tell us that there is a God. I remember telling myself that when I was already a seminarian. Even though I already kind of believed it. I was a seminarian. There was a miracle. There was a sign. And this is really a miracle. There is no question. This was a true miracle. On the day that Archbishop Lefebvre died. March 25th, 1991. I didn't even know that he was sick. Truth is he had cancer and that day he died. And I was a seminarian. The seminary. I was still in Minnesota where the year of what do you call the humanities classes are now. And the Brothers Novitia.
And I was a third year seminarian. I had finished two years before that. In 1991. Here I am. Winona, Minnesota. Was I third year or fourth? I was in there somewhere. I forget now. But I was one of those in the seminary. I wasn't a subdeacon yet. And I come. Outside after dinner. We always had little chores after the meals. Not all of us. But most of the time we would have chores after dinner. Clean the tables off. Wash the dishes. Sweep the floor. Whatever. Something like that. We all did. We took care of the place. We didn't have like a janitorial service working at the seminary.
We get done with our chores. And we're supposed to go outside or do something active. For a little while before study time. Which is 7 .15 p .m. Like a clock. The bell rings. You shut your mouth and go study. So we did that. But I come out. Outside after my chores. And there's something strange. Very strange. I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing up. And goosebumps everywhere. I looked in the sky. And you didn't have to look much. It was the whole sky was this way. The entire sky. Everywhere you looked. You could see what looked like. Bars of light. Like a laser light show.
But not flashing. Just solid light. All around the horizon. Everywhere you turned. And they are different colors. Like the colors of the rainbow. And they all met. Directly overhead. No matter where you moved. They were directly over your head. And you might say. Well it was in the world of Borealis. I've looked in the books. And I don't make them like that. It happened to be. The very moment. When the Archbishop Lefebvre died. And we didn't even know what it was about. And when I looked up and saw that. I said to myself. I think if someone was close enough. They would have heard me.
It was with my mouth. I said it. There is a God. And. And. And. What I could say for us.. Don't look to the future. And the new world could never be like that. Well. As we speak. We can achieve it. If we is nothing when you're with a space that you don't have. But you will. We live today to see what happens later. Maybe we can say. But it was in the middle of all. And the whole universe had to move. I had a better sense of that, talking with the two. By myself. God is love, which means that whatever he does, that's also what he is. He's not separating his activity from his being because he's so simple that what he is is also what he does, and what he does is also what he is.
And because he loves, that's the reason he created us out of nothing. You might say, well, he used my parents. True, but he didn't have any parents for Adam, and he made Adam nonetheless, so he doesn't have to have parents to make somebody, although that's the way he does it nowadays in general. So God made us out of nothing. He made us because he wants someone to give his love to. And he has this love, and he might say in a certain way of speaking, it's not every way, but in a certain way, that God, because he loves us, that is his vulnerability. How can God be hurt?
Because he gives his love, and then it is returned with the opposite of love. Either we fail to love him altogether, or we do something even totally against him, whether it be by just negligence and not caring to love God in return, or by even despairing. Or by just revising or blaming God for our problems. That's how we can hurt God, and that's why sin offends God. And sin's God is the infinite good. It's an infinite crime to offend him. Infinite. There's no way to measure what is the level of evil in a sin. Because there's no way to measure God. So we want to, therefore, try and focus our efforts in this life.
We have a limited time on planet Earth until we die. Of course, if Elon Musk is successful, then a limited time while you occupy Mars. A limited time to do what? Develop genuine love towards the Holy Trinity. And by doing that in this world, we fulfill the one commandment that matters the most, and the one commandment that we must follow. And the one commandment that leads us to love all of the other commandments, and keep them. That we truly care for God. And as I was saying, it doesn't happen automatically. And we're born little babies, we're totally self -centered.
But we work our way out of that. Especially by explaining these things to our own hearts. That is the tactic that works. It works. It has the results that we're talking about. Why? First of all, our hearts, when I say our heart, I mean our free will. The heart is a muscle that pumps your blood. But we have a free will, and the heart is very tightly associated with our free will. So when I say talk to your heart about it, I mean talk to your willpower and your heart too, of course. Both. Tell your heart things like, about the Holy Trinity. He's infinite. I can still remember Luke Skywalker trying to get Han Solo interested in saving the princess, Princess Leo, you know.
She's beautiful, she's rich. He was telling Han Solo all of it. Because Han Solo was ready to try to get out of there with his skin, and with his Millennium Falcon ship, and all that. He wanted to get his hot rod back into outer space before it was destroyed. And he was not, he was in a stardust anymore. Right. So he was like, I don't know, I'm not going to do anything. but he was trying to get Han Solo to care for the princess eventually he fell in love with the princess, that's how it worked but we want our hearts to fall in love with God and we want to convince our hearts because it doesn't happen automatically convince our own hearts let's go on ahead and love the Holy Trinity just like a good guy would do it somebody with two or more gray cells between their ears would go ahead and make up their minds and do that let's love God, let's do that it's a smart move, it's my program, I'm going to get with it now
how? well, love starts here and so we foster a care for the Holy Trinity in our very breast, right here we say good things to our own hearts about God He's all knowing He knows everything, God knows everything even our secret thoughts He knows everything and that is glorious none of us knows everything some of us think we know everything I like the little anecdote where the very snooty what we call a a a a a scholastic, somebody who's like studying all their life intellectual snobs, we'll call them the intellectual snob says about other intellectual snobs those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those of us who do says it in very annoying tones, right?
well, that's what we can be like when we think we know everything we know very little by comparison to God, it's almost nothing but we know very little but we are great we just gonna name our life we just gonna know everything we've read make us understand then we're gonna beGet at least Westwood nothing right now and we're gonna live you know we're gonna stay alive same thing about it. But the things that we hear that are revelations from God, the things that are teachings of the Catholic religion, those things are even more certain than the natural science that we know, because they are from the one who made the natural science.
And when he reveals them, he doesn't say anything except precisely what he teaches. So we have such beautiful happiness to know God has taught us things, and he knows that they are true. And because they're from God, when we see the teachings of the Catholic religion, we say, well, these are true. And this is what an act of faith is to go ahead and say, yeah, it's true. It comes from God. It's true. That's an act of faith. So we say something to our hearts like, he cares about me. He loves me. There is interest. We know that we're happy when someone cares about us, especially if they're not some kind of a weirdo, a nerd, a serial killer, or something like that. Someone that we kind of respect, and if we can sense that they care about us, that is a pleasant experience.
We want good people to care for us. Well, God is a good people. And yes, he does care for us. We want to delight ourselves by the very truth that he loves this guy, me, whoever I am. He loves me. It was the motto of Archbishop Lefebvre. Archbishop Lefebvre, his Episcopal coat of arms with a motto. The motto says, And we have been... Believed in charity. Now, it doesn't say the rest of this line there in the Epistle to St. John, but that charity that is in that little motto of Archbishop Lefebvre, if you read the rest of it right after that in the Bible, it says, the charity that God has towards us.
We have believed in charity. And believing God's love towards us is the catalyst that teaches our hearts to return their love to God. It calls for an answer. God loves me. Well, that calls for some kind of a response. And I always think of the old movie. It was a story called Brian's Song. Some of you older folks remember it. Brian's Song. I'm an older folks. So, it was in the 70s, I think. And it was about two. Two college football players who were roommates. Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers. Now, Brian was white and Gale Sayers was black. But they were friends.
And Gale Sayers was kind of like a little grumpy. Brian was a chipper guy, you know. And so, in the morning, you know, in the movie you see in the morning, they wake up in the morning, they're moving around the house in the morning, or in their apartment or whatever, they're rooming together. And Brian Piccolo says to Gale Sayers, Good morning. And Gale Sayers doesn't answer. He just kind of ignores him. Then Brian says something else. He goes, When somebody says good morning to you, that calls for some kind of a response. Like, for example, good morning and how are you?
Or, how's your mother? And Gale Sayers is still a little bit, you know, whippy. So, instead of saying good morning, how are you? He says, How's your mother? But the point there is, if someone's showing you some good, that calls for the return of good from you back to them. And the good of God's love towards us. That's why certain people who see this dedicate their entire life to showing their love towards God. Some of them by becoming religious or priests. Some of them by founding works of charity to the poor and the underprivileged. Depends on what their aptitudes are. What can you do?
You try to go to the seminary, so you decide, okay, yeah, I'll be a priest. And you go to the seminary and you start studying, and the seminary professors and the leadership in the seminary tells you, listen, you're not cut out for this, get out of here. Make room for someone else. Okay, well, it's not for everybody. And let your superiors tell you that. But if you're not, if that's not for you, you don't want to say, well, therefore I just quit. No, you find something else to do for God. And you set your whole life as an answer to God for the love that he bears to you.
And we can find ourselves happy, so happy in this world, even if that doesn't go so well. There are all kinds of bumps and bruises and reverses and all kinds of trouble. People, when you try to do something good, get ready for attacks. Because that's what happens. The devil doesn't like to see somebody doing what Jesus wanted them to do. So he's going to try things. But you just say, well, yeah, I was kind of expecting that. Let's just go ahead and do our best in spite of the trouble and not be worried about the trouble. Just say, well, okay, plan B. We'll do this.
We'll do this instead. I want to make these adjustments to deal with the problem that came our way. But we haven't stopped serving God. And that's the main thing. I'm still doing it for God. And nothing can stop me. Nothing. Because God never changes. And if I start by serving God, that's why I keep going. Even if it's not easy. Take care of God. That's why I tell the couples, I'm getting a couple ready for marriage. And I say, listen, this is your founding principle of marriage. Your whole idea about marriage. Forget everything you ever learned about marriage before. And listen to me.
You have to take this as doing a service for God. And a service for His church. And a service towards your children. If you do that, nothing can stop you. Right? If you keep that as your principle and you never change it, you're going to do fine. Very fine. No matter how much trouble comes your way. But if you've got other reasons that you're getting married. And these are not that important to you. You can count on a rough go. And probably a sad ending. Because God is everything. And if we don't know Him, we don't know God. We don't have that as our principle. We're off the mark.
We're not there. So we teach our hearts. God is everything to me. I'll take care of God. Let us ask for the help we need. Because we all need help. This philosophy of life. This whole outlook. It starts with an act of faith. And in order to make one act of faith, we need help from God. And we ask Him then. Ask and you shall receive. Let us ask the Lord God to help us. First of all, to believe His gospel. Believe the Catholic religion. And second of all, to organize all of our philosophy of life around it. So that we're in this way united to Jesus and His thoughts.
And in His cares. And in His goals. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Summary
The homily begins by affirming the power of Christ's resurrection, emphasizing that He rose from the dead by His own will, demonstrating His divinity and fulfilling His obedience to God the Father. It then transitions into a discussion on charity, using the example of Christ washing the apostles' feet to illustrate the importance of selfless acts of love and service to others. The homily concludes by encouraging the faithful to love God wholeheartedly, aligning their lives with His commandments to find true fulfillment and purpose.