Third Sunday in Easter

April 26, 2009

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church, 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

Luke 24:35-48

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            Our Gospel this morning answers two of the greatest heresies ever to afflict the Church, and it does so simply by recording what happened when Jesus appeared to His disciples after He had risen from the dead.

            The first heresy this Gospel refutes is every manner of body versus spirit dualism.  Coming under many names over the centuries, dualism has manifested itself as Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Waldensianism, Albigensianism, and various other famous movements that have led people astray.

            Dualism posits that the body and the soul are opposed to each other, valuing the spirit as good and the body as bad.  According to these heresies, since the body is bad, the spirit must be freed from the body, and every manner of abuse of the body is permitted, including murder and suicide, in order to destroy the body and free the soul.  Despising the body leads those same sects to deny that Jesus ever, in fact, had a human body, and they are uniform in claiming that Jesus only appeared to have a physical presence but really did not.

             That is where this morning’s Gospel comes in.  Jesus shows the disciples that He is really physically present with them.  He shows them His wounds and reminds them that He is still made up of flesh and bones.  He goes so far as to eat a piece of fish in their presence to demonstrate that His resurrected body is not a mere spirit, akin to a ghost.  Rather, just as He was born of Mary at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, so at the end Jesus is shown to come in the flesh, even after His resurrection from the dead.

            The bodily resurrection of Jesus indicates three things, and in doing so, refutes dualism.  First, holiness while still within our bodies is possible.  The dualistic sects taught that one must be free of the body to be holy.  Jesus shows us that the body itself is holy.  Something created by God and integral to our being, the body is not something to be escaped, but something to be purified, sanctified, even as our souls are sanctified.

            Second, because the body is good and is a gift from God, it is not to be abused but cared for as tenderly and as strenuously as we care for our immortal souls.  Dualists held that bodies could be abused because they are a curse from which we must struggle to escape.  By affirming the goodness of the created order, including the physical aspect of being human, the resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us that the abuse of the body is the abuse of a gift.  If we are to be good stewards of the gifts God has given us, we must take care of our bodies.  Murder and suicide are, of course, out of the question, but so are lesser forms of abuse—self-mutilation, gluttony, drunkenness, drug abuse, sexual licentiousness, and every other form of abuse that puts the integrity and holiness of the body at risk.

            Third, the resurrection of Jesus teaches us about the future to which we ourselves are called.  Because the body is an integral and holy component of man, because our bodies are a gift to be cherished, not a burden to be escaped, Jesus rises from the dead with His body and shows us that we will, too.  The resurrection at the Last Day, when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead, will be the time when our bodies will be restored to us.  Our reconstituted bodies will be incorruptible and eternal, just as Jesus’ body is.  Thus, the resurrection points to the glory inherent in our own bodies.  If we will one day be glorified as Jesus has been, so we must prefigure that glory by how we treat our bodies today.  If we want our bodies to be tortured for all eternity, then we can torture our bodies today through every manner of physical abuse.  But if we hope to be glorified as Jesus is now glorified, we reflect the glory yet to be revealed in how we live here and now.

            Thus, to refute the modern manifestations of dualism we must assert first that our bodies are a blessing and holiness is possible.  We do not need to sterilize ourselves:  we can control ourselves.  We do not need to abuse alcohol and drugs to stimulate us:  Jesus has given us His Body and Blood.  We do not need surgery to help us lose weight:  we can eat less.

            Second, we affirm that because our bodies are good we will take care of them, recognizing that what we do to our bodies in the end affects our souls.  Except to preserve the lives of others, we will not risk harm to our bodies.  We will not invite disease through what we do or neglect to do.  In short, our bodies are not objects to be manipulated however we wish, in order to achieve a flawed vision of perfection.  We will allow Jesus to perfect us morally, and in the end, we will be perfected physically.

            Finally, we will refute the dualists by treating or lives as gifts even in the midst of suffering.  Those who see the body as a curse and an object are quick to pronounce the body a burden as soon as suffering comes along.  Jesus showed us that the integrity of God’s creation is more powerful than the sin that destroys it.  All the tortures the Romans devised could not obliterate the body of Jesus.  Just so, no amount of disease and pain can keep us from inheriting our eternal bodies, so long as we suffer as patiently as Jesus did.  Death will come to us eventually, as it comes to all.  There is no need to hasten death when doing so means the torments we wish to escape will have to be suffered for all eternity.  Our bodies are a gift up to the moment we die, because in them we are given the privilege to suffer for Jesus and with Jesus, to experience whatever the angels will never know, but what God Himself has known.  At the resurrection of the just, such patience will be rewarded with a body that will never know the pains we dreaded here.

            How do you know all that I have said today is true?  How do you know it is not merely my own opinion?  Because all I have said is consistent with what the Church teaches, what the Church herself was taught by Jesus Himself the day Jesus rose from the dead.  The only way we know how to interpret the Scriptures that God has given us is if we are in communion with those who received from Jesus the correct interpretations.  This is the second heresy which today’s Gospel refutes, the heresy of antinomianism, that somehow by private revelation of the Holy Spirit, we can figure out for ourselves what the truth is.  NO, in fact the Lord gave us the Church to reveal all Truth, and we need it still if we are to understand fully what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means for the world.  You can trust what I say because I am in communion with that Church, and I say only what the Church teaches.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus Christ, and gives us the Church to teach us how to live this victory.