First reading: Genesis 2:7-9 and Genesis 3:1-7
Psalm: Ps 51:3-6,12-13,17
Epistle: Romans 5:12-19
Gospel: Matthew 4:1-11

how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace
and of the gift of justification
come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.

Distance

I want you to picture that day, John, Mary, the other women standing under the cross. Jesus has died, His blood and water flow out and onto the ground. Now walk with me. We travel through time, and what happened to that moment under the cross? It is farther and farther away. It seems to be distant, history, something from long ago.

Birth of the Church

From the moment of Jesus’ death, from the moment the first drop of His blood hit the ground, the Church was born. But what is the Church? What was born at that moment? And, is what was born that moment only history?

What we are not

First we must consider what the Church is not:

The Church is not an opportunity for fellowship. The Church is not a club or exclusive group. The Church is not an earthly institution. The Church was not established only for our well-being or to teach us moral rules for life. The Church is not solely what it does, the sacraments, the synods, meetings and bishops, priests, deacons, councils.

In fact, Jesus Christ died that the Church might be born. As we stand under the cross we stand at the very moment the Church was born, and that moment defines us forever.

Time doesn’t matter

Father and I both like science fiction. Those familiar with sci-fi know that on occasion authors play on time travel. What some consider science fiction, we live – for this is what the Church is.

That little journey we took, we must see as a falsehood. The cross isn’t back there in time, a moment long ago and lost to books and history. We are not here, at a distance, removed from the foot of the cross.

At that moment of Christ’s death, at the moment the Holy Church was born, the cross extended through time and space. It became an eternally present reality and the very center and focus of our lives.

God gave us the Church from that moment, and forever, so that we might be saved. He gave us the Church so that His life would be ours and our lives would be His.

We know that God is love, and He gave the Holy Church that we might become the very love of God found in the cross.

Becoming

In the Church, in the Holy Cross, we do more than evolve. We don’t just become better people. We come to exist as we should, as we were designed to exist.

The Church is the reality of God’s life with us, and our life with Him. It is where the love of each member for each member, and the love of each member for all, is our truth.

The Church is the place where forgiveness is not a moral act, or something we are obligated to do -– but rather an act that is at the core of our existence, something we do because it is who we are. Goodness, humility, kindness, generosity, truth, evangelism, charity are who we are, not things we do just because someone else, long ago and far away, said we should. The Church is the reality where we find who we really are, not the place we fight against who we are.

If God were cruel, He would have designed us as evil or ignorant beings, and then would have given us rules, so that we lived in constant conflict against our nature. No! God created us in His image, with true humanity and love at our core. He gave us the Church to be the place we connect to our nature, to our life in Him, to our life as it is meant to be.

If we fail to see the Church as the mystical center and ark of salvation we fail to understand the thing most fundamental to our Christian faith. The Church is the ark in which we meet God, stand under the cross, and where we weather the storms of what we are not with God. It is the place that takes us from the flood of sin and death — the things against ourselves, and carries us to eternal life with God.

Standing in

So today we stand in the Church. We stand in the mystical place that meets the cross extending through all of history and time. In it we experience the body and blood of Jesus, the very body on the cross, the very blood that flowed from it. In the Church we touch that very moment. We stand under the cross and in the cross. We stand with God, and in Him. We connect to who we were always meant to be, with more than that, with who we really are. We find God in us and God in each other. That, my friends, is the Church.

Today we encounter the crucified Christ, in His full reality. In this encounter, in this very moment, our encounter with Him is an encounter with His eternal love and forgiveness.

In the Church we extend God’s love and forgiveness to all. We encounter Christ not because we have purged the Church or the world of every sinner, or have corrected everything we think wrong, but because we embrace the weakness of love, the cross, which saves all. Our love, our unity with God’s love, is stronger even than death. In the fulfillment of the love shown in the cross, present today, present in our lives, we find our resurrection. Our union with the Crucified Christ, and the love He gave of the cross, marks the heart of our Christian vocation and life.

More than heritage

Today we give special thanks for our organizer, Bishop Francis Hodur, and those brave souls who reconnected themselves with the reality of the Holy Cross, who understood the Christian vocation as the fellowship of believers who live in unity of love, who are true to the cross of love. It exists as much today as it did in 1897, as it did 2,000 years ago.

Those brave Christians saw the truth: not the organization, not the structures, not the cathedrals or palaces. They saw the cross and the call to live within the Church of Christ as brothers and sisters. That is not just our 114 year old heritage, it is our reality today. We are not distant. We stand in the same place, under the same cross of love, where weakness is strength, where life is eternal, where we meet God and each other, true to our Christian vocation, one in love.

As St. Paul said: We have received the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification in the present eternal reality of the Church. Because of that, we will come to reign in life eternal through Jesus Christ.

Amen.