Undercover

From all appearances, it looks like we are running a resale shop at St. Vincent de Paul. But that’s just our cover. It’s such an ingenious disguise that we fool a lot of people, sometimes even ourselves.
            A young, single father who had recently been laid-off and had an appointment to get help, got lost trying to find us. He telephoned from our parking lot.
            “There’s nothing here but a store. Are you sure you gave me the right address?”
            “Yeah, that’s us. You’re in the right place.”
            “I am? When I walked in, it didn’t look right to me, so I went back to my car and called. I was looking for a church or something.”
It’s easy to understand why he was confused. It happens to us, too. At our meetings we sometimes get into discussions about how better to run the store. Should we raise our prices? Give away less? Not accept so many donations? Lock our dumpster? Move to a better retail location? All issues that come up with any resale shop. It doesn’t take long before it occurs to us that our purpose is not to run the most profitable, shrewd, efficient, riff-raff free store in town. Our purpose is to help the poor and to change our own way of thinking and being. It only looks like we run a store.
            One Saturday a young woman came rushing in, crying. She told Jim and Bonnie that her friend’s baby was very sick and needed to see a doctor. She had no car, no money for a cab or an ambulance, and it was eight degrees outside. Our volunteers had to make a quick decision. They would have to close the store in order to take this mother and baby to the medical clinic. What to do? They drove her to the clinic, of course.
            After all, we’re not running a store. The young woman saw through our cover and it only took our volunteers a moment to realize it.
            As soon as the crisis had passed, Jim and Bonnie walked back behind the cash register and pretended to be store clerks again. Just like after Mass every Sunday, millions of Catholics walk back out into their neighborhoods and pretend to be ordinary citizens again. We’re not. It’s just our cover.
             As we celebrate the passion and death of Jesus, let us look into his face and feel his love and compassion for the poor and oppressed.  Today, his sufferings are reflected in the faces of the poor and the immigrant. Let us comfort our Lord by embracing the immigrant among us.            

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Living the Liturgy
By Fr. Robert Johansen
Pastor, St. Stanislaus Parish, Dorr

“Victimae Paschali Laudes!” So begins the Easter sequence sung throughout the Church on Easter Sunday. Or, as we may sing it in English:

                        Christians to the Paschal Victim

                        Offer your thankful praises!

                        A Lamb the sheep redeems;

                        Christ who only is sinless,

                        Reconciles sinners to the Father.

This ancient hymn of praise, over a millennium old, expresses the Easter joy of the whole Church — the Church of today, and the Church of ages past. We are not alone in singing this exclamation of praise: the saints and angels of heaven, the countless throng of believers who have gone before us, join in this hymn in heaven.

            “Christ who only is sinless, reconciles sinners to the Father.” This is, as we might say, “what it’s all about. Christ suffered and died so, like Lazarus, he could say to us “Come out!” Come out of darkness into light. Come out of death into life. Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection are the gateway, the portal, out of the degeneration and decay of this world’s life, into the very life of the Trinity. We are invited to encounter the living Christ, just as the disciples did on the road to Emmaus. When we meet Jesus, we meet life itself, for he said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” We are invited to live in relationship with Him, so that His life may live in us.

            We meet the risen Christ in the liturgy. In the celebration of the mass, Christ draws us into His life of eternity. When we encounter Christ in the liturgy, we meet Him at the Last Supper, at Calvary, and at the resurrection. Again, in the sequence we sing:

 

Death and life have contended in that combat stupendous:

The Prince of Life, who died, reigns immortal.

The “combat stupendous” was the struggle between the Prince of Death and the Prince of Life. The battlefield was Calvary, and Satan’s weapon was the cross. Christ endured everything Satan could do: the scourging, the nails, the ridicule of the crowd. And Christ won by seeming to lose: He gave up His life and took Satan’s weapon from him. Now Christ has turned Satan’s weapon into the sign of His triumph.

            This combat — the contest between death and life, is made present to us every time we are gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. This drama is especially heightened in the liturgies of Holy Week and Easter, but the reality is present to us at every celebration of the mass. At every mass, particularly at Sunday mass, we are transported, if you will, to the ultimate reality: Christ’s eternal sacrifice for the world. Remember that next time you feel bored at mass. At mass we are present and participate in the most stupendous event in human history: the conquest of sin and death.

 

The Easter sequence concludes:

            Christ indeed from death is risen,

            our new life obtaining.

            Have mercy, victor King, ever reigning!

We tend to think of mercy as something weak, or a sort of indulgence. We equate mercy with being “let off the hook.” But something far more profound is happening here. Christ’s mercy is the greatest power in the universe. We beg Christ to have mercy on us, because His mercy is backed up by power — the power to stop death in its tracks; the power to restore life; the power to turn back the ravages of sin. And that power is offered to us, that power is unleashed, in the liturgy. If we are open to that power, if we allow that power to go to work in us, we too can experience the glory of the resurrection. Christ turned Satan’s own weapon against him, and vanquished death. There is nothing of ours that He cannot transform and redeem. The power of the victorious Christ is made available to you in the liturgy. Live in that power. Live in that mercy. Live in the victory of our King, ever reigning