It's three homilies in one podcast, as Father Mark focuses his Holy Week messaging on the three-fold revelation about God’s presence in our lives as outlined by Mother Julian of Norwich: “God made me, God loves me, God keeps me.”
The gospel reading for Holy Thursday: John 13:1-15
It's three homilies in one podcast, as Father Mark focuses his Holy Week messaging on the three-fold revelation about God’s presence in our lives as outlined by Mother Julian of Norwich: “God made me, God loves me, God keeps me.”
The gospel reading for Holy Thursday: John 13:1-15
Hi everyone, and welcome to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko, Pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. We are part of the Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford. I'm Carol Vassar, parish director of communications. This is Episode 16 of Season 5, and it features Father Mark’s Triduum homilies from Holy Saturday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil- April 14th, 15th and April 16th, 2022. Together, these homies focus on the three-fold revelation about God’s presence in our lives as outlined by Mother Julian of Norwich: “God made me, God loves me, God keeps me.”
Our gospel reading for Holy Thursday is from John 13:1-15, for Good Friday is from John: 18:1—19:42, and for Easter Vigil is from Mark 16: 1-7. Links to each reading may be found in the show notes for this episode. And now, Father Mark’s homilies for the Easter Triduum, beginning with Holy Thursday: April 14, 2022
HOLY THURSDAY: We live very overstimulated lives. There's so much coming at us all the time. If it's not on our computers, it's on our phones. If it's not on our phones, it's on the television set. If we're not texting, if we're not emailing, if we're not attending to different demands that were made upon us, if we're not responding to something.
And there's so much flurry of activity in all corners of our lives, always and everywhere it's hard to become quiet. And when we find time to be quiet, we almost feel like we're wasting time and worse yet, it's so unfamiliar to us we don't even know what to do with it. And so we want to fill it up with other things. So we take out the phone again and we start playing games or we text somebody back again, or we do something else to occupy our time and stimulate us because we're so used to being engaged in everything. And so in all of this flurry of activity, when do we really stop and find time to reflect on the bigger purpose of life, on who we are?
You know, there are two questions that really preoccupied the minds of the early philosophers and they engage them and they were the seedbed of a lot of creativity and phenomenal intellectual work. Two questions. "Where did I come from" and "why am I here?" Where did I come from? And why am I here?
And I suppose in the midst of all of this flurry of activity, even our young people are here today when they think about who they are and what human life is all about, why am I here? It's very easy to convince ourselves that this is just some random journey we're on here. That there is really no rhyme or reason to any of it other than what I make of it. And that I'm here just because. So if I'm here just because then let's make the best of it. And get through it. Jesus was fully aware that he came from God and was returning to God and had power. Think about that for a moment. Jesus was fully aware that he came from God and was returning to God and had power.
Power. You see, if you look at all that, Jesus said, all that Jesus did, all of his works and his teachings, the way he interacted with his disciples. When you put it all together and you put it out, you want to sum it up in a few simple words. The point that he was trying to convey is that God made me. You see, that's the different message guys, from what we hear in the world because you're not going to hear that in the world.
You're only going to hear that here. And hopefully at home that God made me. Jesus is trying to get people to wake up and realize this. It's that old battle between God and Caesar. Do I give myself to the world or do I give myself to God? To whom do I belong? Who tells me who I am? Who defines me? Who really matters?
And so he was able to say that and so profoundly because when God makes something or someone, as I've often said before, he doesn't just create it and then go on to something else. He doesn't just make a person and then go onto another person and continue the whole thing over and over again. It's hard for us to understand, but when God makes someone or something, God leaves a part of himself there.
God leaves a bit of his divine DNA there. So at the heart and the soul of every human being is God. And that's why Jesus made such a big deal about loving God, but also having to love your neighbor and loving yourself. Because they're all connected. God's DNA is in all of them. God is God, God is in you. And God is in a person sitting next to you and we're all connected. So his friends had a hard time understanding this, especially when it came to service, you know. And Jesus said to Peter, "I'm going to wash your feet." Peter says, "no, no, no, no. You're not going to do that. That's my job to do for you. You can't serve me in that way. You're the master. I'm not." Jesus says "no, it's the other way around. Today I'm the servant." The servant. Why did Jesus say that, do you think? Jesus said that because serving one another isn't just about helping. Serving one another isn't just about doing a kind act. Serving one another isn't just about being charitable. Serving one another is a sacred moment.
Think about that. Serving one another is a sacred moment. When you hold the door open for someone, as simple as that, you have the opportunity to encounter another person who has the same DNA in you, in-depth. It can be an opportunity to see beyond their eyes, to what's going on in their soul. What's happening within them to the bigger picture of who they are.
We have a world that's out of control. We have such a hard time finding a place where we feel safe today. Where in body, mind, and spirit we can be free and not have to worry every time you around there's some other act of violence happening. In all corners of the world things are erupting. Our poor brothers and sisters in Ukraine and other areas of our world. We're clinging on to life.
At the heart of that is a world that is so confused because it doesn't know why they're here and what the deeper meaning and purpose of life is all about. We don't know why we're here. We're not here just because, and therefore can do whatever we want in the confines of this universe, in which we find ourselves.
We are here because of God. And that changes things up because at my core, I'm made in the image and the likeness of God and we serve each other because of that likeness. Jesus had power. Jesus had power. You know, one of our basic tenants of our faith is that Jesus is both God and man. That when God became one like us, he didn't lose the man part, the human part, and just become God.
He was both. Human and divine at one in the same time. And Jesus had power. Power given to him by the Father to not only preach and teach but also to continue to extend that divine gift. To continue to leave the legacy of incarnation over and over again. And so he took bread and he took wine and he said to his friends, "as God made me, I make myself for you. And what you see is still bread and still wine just as I am very much a man standing before you, but it's also me, God. And I leave this with you as a source of strength, as a source of consolation, as a go-to when life gets so confusing that we can't figure it out where we can find an anchor . Where we can find an anchor and recenter and regroup. You know, Julian of Norwich has a great image.
And she calls Jesus a kind nurse. A kind nurse, and says Jesus is all about caring for the salvation of those under his care, of caring about the salvation of those under his care, such a tender image that every one of us, Jesus, the suffering servant again is laying his life down for us, tending to us because he wants us to be whole, he wants us to be happy.
He doesn't want us to be fragmented and he wants us to know who we are. And see that's really what salvation is all about is really figuring out who we are. Because, when we leave here and go to heaven, we become who we really are. We don't lose anything. And so today we celebrate two very sacred moments, the sacred moments of service when we open ourselves to the needs of another and celebrate the sacredness of that encounter.
And we celebrate the sacredness of the Eucharist. Within the confusion of our life we have this, our hospital, to come to and the divine nurse who is also a kind of nurse in Jesus Christ who is here to welcome. Here to offer us to consolation, here to offer us the care, the direction, the hope, and the love that we so desperately need.
You see, tonight's really all about faith. And it's faith in something simple, but it's hard for us to really get our hands on and accept. And it's this: faith is really understanding without doubt that Jesus was not wrong, that Jesus cannot be wrong. That all he taught and all he died for and all he was is true. Once we make that leap, then we can know the truth about ourselves and what life is really meant to be.
You are listening to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko. I’m Carol Vassar and this is a special, extended Easter Triduum podcast. This homily comes from the Good Friday service of April 15, 2022:
GOOD FRIDAY: Every Holy Week, and in particular on Good Friday, I always find myself reflecting back again on a statement that Stephen Hawking, who was a renowned physicist, said about the afterlife. He said that the afterlife and belief in the afterlife is nothing more than a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark, nothing more than a fairy story of people who are afraid of the dark. As you ponder those words, is that what today is really all about? Are we simply trying to find a way through our fear of death, to find some way of figuring it all out and justifying it all in our minds, relieving our fear of the dark? Yesterday, we talked about the first Julian of Norwich's admonitions about God, "God made me."
In particular, God makes us in his image and likeness. Yesterday brought us then to the virtue of faith, where it's faith we take that leap and we believe all that Jesus said and did is true and that it cannot be wrong. So with that faith, now we come today. And does that bring us simply to this place where we're looking to relieve ourselves from that fear of the dark? Or is it more?
The second of Julian of Norwich's admonitions about God is, "God loves me." God loves me.
So as you ponder those three simple words, we then look at our lives a bit and we know what the human journey is all about. And we know that it's riddled with a lot of suffering, with a lot of death, a lot of injustice, with a lot of war, with people looking out for their own self-interests and trotting over human beings and disrespecting human life.
We look at our own personal self journeys and they're loaded with experiences of death and sorrow. We struggle with physical pain. Life is certainly not easy so it's no wonder then, a person who may listen to the words, "God made me" and accept those. Then hears those words, "God loves me," looks at the human condition, looks at their life, and says, "well, what about all this suffering and hardship? If you love me so much, why did you make life so hard? Why can't you do something about it? If you love me so much." And people stumbled over that question. They stumbled over, "where is God in all of this?" And it's at that point that a lot of folks just abandoned the face because they can't square off where this God of love fits in the midst of all the misery.
And so they conclude that maybe it's all just a big fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark.
Maybe in God's wisdom, he knew what he was doing. You see, we have such a hard time understanding the passion. Okay, we understand that God is God and that God visited his people. God became one with us, but when it gets to all of the crucifixion stuff, we have a hard time wrapping our brains around that. We have a hard time understanding the betrayal of how people who trusted in Jesus, all of a sudden turned their back on him.
How a man who was only preaching the virtue of love, basically, and the goodness of God and of people ended up being treated worse than someone who committed murder and crucified and hung on a tree. We have a hard time understanding that. We have a hard time understanding our own suffering in light of God's love. Maybe part of the problem that we're facing isn't with God, but it's with our understanding of what love is, with what love is. You know, we tend to equate love with our desire for something.
If I desire a relationship with you, then it stands to reason then it's because I want to love you. And I want you to love me in return, that we see characteristics and traits in others that we're attracted to. And we reach out for, we want to be a part of their lives and for them to be a part of ours.
And we equate that with love. Love equals desire. But if that's all that love is that often can get loaded with a lot of self-interest. It reflects more of me than anything else when it becomes all about my desires and my wants. Maybe love is bigger than that. And if we define love in broader terms and say that love is really the driver of life, the reason for life, then we begin to make more sense out of love and how God can be love.
God is the driver of life. Love is the driver of life. God is the reason for life. Love is the reason for life. Now it begins to make a little bit more sense and helps us understand how folks who face incredible suffering can still get up the next day and persevere. It makes us understand a little bit more how even in spite of physical pain, people still want to engage in tasks. People still want to engage in life and life is not over. It makes us understand a little bit more about how complex and interesting and wonderful human life is. It makes us marvel at folks a little bit more. You know, I witness here in church every once in a while when we hang outside there's one couple that comes regularly for a visit to mass. And they both have very severe disabilities and you can see it's so difficult for them to get out of the car, to even come into the doors. And it takes them an incredible amount of time just to come in and spend some time with Jesus and the blessed sacrament. It's so hard for the gentleman that he screams in pain as he gets back into his car because it's important for him to be here.
In the face of that kind of love, there is also suffering. So maybe it is that they're companions. You need suffering in order to have love, make sense. The times in our life when we have suffered, we have come out the other end, loving better. The times when we have suffered, we have purified our agendas a bit and become more focused, more real, more authentic. True.
The times that we have suffered we have been seasoned a bit, and we've learned that these things that we thought were important before aren't anymore, and we come out stronger, more courageous, and more whole. You see, we tend to think when we're going through times of suffering or reaching out for God, that God is out there and I'm suffering over here.
And so the trick becomes, how do I get God who's out there to come over here and help me with the suffering that I'm experiencing here? And there's this great divide that happens between us and God, to the point where we begin to say, "God, why are you doing this to me? Why can't you do anything about this?"
Even Jesus faced that question as he was in the garden. "Father, if it is your will take this cup away from me." Even he asked that question, but then I suspect he realized something deeper. That God isn't out there and I'm over here in my suffering, that somehow it's all mixed together. You see if suffering and love are companions, if we need both of them to journey together, to create the beauty and depth of life, if we can only understand ourselves, if we suffer a bit and journey through some discomfort, then it stands to reason too that God who is love, might be the God of suffering love and he's not out there and I'm over here, but we're together in this incredible journey and that when I suffered God suffers with me and that's the message of the cross. When Jesus gave up his spirit, it is finished.
It was the wedding of love and suffering together that produced the glory of the resurrection. The glory of the resurrection, the new life that came just like it happens with us when we go through our moments of suffering. They're horrible, they're dark, they're dirty, they're difficult, they're challenging. We want them to end. And when they do, we feel this breath of life and we're free again. And that's the glory of the cross. The glory of the cross. So yesterday, "God made me," God made me in his image and likeness brought us to the virtue of faith. Today, "God loves me." It brings us to the virtue of love, but not just love, suffering love, which is all part of this bigger, deeper picture of who I am on this journey of life, walking and traveling with my faith in the God who made me and in the God who loves me.
You are listening to Weekly Homilies with Father Mark Suslenko. This is a special Easter Triduum podcast. The third and final homily for this episode is from the Easter Vigil Mass at SS. Isidore and Maria Parish at St. Paul Church on Saturday, April 16, 2022:
EASTER VIGIL: We started our mini parish retreat on Thursday, walking through Holy Week with Julian of Norwich. And we focused on her first revelation regarding God, that God made me. And as we reflected on that revelation, we made the reference that we are all made in the image and likeness of God. And that our encounters with one another and our encounters with the Eucharist are all sacred moments of our lives. That we are not just called to do kind things for one another, but when we put our lives in service of one another, there's a divine meaning because the image of God that's in me is also in you. And then the sacred Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus Christ comes forth from simple elements of bread and wine. And those elements of bread and wine remain such, but also become the fullness of God's life and love. And then on Good Friday, we gathered and we reflected on her second revelation regarding God. And that is that God loves us and how our understanding of love sometimes needs a little bit of correction.
And that love is really perfected when we suffer. As suffering tempers love and brings it to a deeper, more profound place. And so that God is love but God is suffering love. And so God is not out there and we are here with our suffering, but that God is one with us as we go through the growing pains of life and the sufferings of life.
And now we find ourselves here today, celebrating the resurrection of Christ. And we look at our lives and how we live them day by day, moment by moment, year by year, you know and many of us, if you're anything like myself, you put a lot of time to trying to control things. We try to manipulate the outcomes of things. We direct things. And in trying to control things we become very concerned about our future, our securities. We know where we are today, but we're not sure where we're going to be tomorrow. And then all of those variables that can creep into life, do. The unexpecteds. And we find ourselves overly burdened with trying to control the outcome of things.
Almost so that we become our own keepers. We feel that our lives depend solely on us and the lives of our loved ones depend solely on us that unless we keep on top of things unless we do what we think we need to do, then the bottom is gonna fall out. And we're afraid of that bottom falling out of our lives.
"What happens if...?" is a big melody that plays over in our brains over and over and over again. Someone struggling with terminal illness, "what happens if I die, to my children?" And we want to control how life comes about, but, you know, as we look back on our faith there's only one person who can keep us.
God keeps us, you see when it's all said and done, we're really not in charge of our own destiny at all. The very fact that we are here, breathing and living is not due to anything that we've done for ourselves. It's due only to God. God is the author of all life. He's the author of all love. He is the essence of our being and he is the one who sustains us in being.
God keeps us. So as God keeps us and keeps us breathing and living our future, doesn't rest in our own hands, although we would like to believe in the illusion that it does, our future rests in God's hands. God keeps us and that's Julian of Norwich's third revelation about God that God keeps us. And so as we move through the uncontrollables of life and we look at our children, if you look at our parents, as we look at our spouse, we know where we are and where we're going, but then we look at them and we look at life and everyone has to live their own journey.
You know, part of the things that we struggle with is that "I want to live your journey for you. I want to take your burdens and bring them onto myself." What parent doesn't think that about their child, what parent doesn't want to take the sufferings of their child onto their own to relieve them of that burden?
What person doesn't want to take the lure of death away from a loved one and take it on themselves? We struggle with this. But in reality, we all have to live our own journeys as life plays out for us with the good and also with the difficult and with the bad. But we're not totally our own keepers. We're not totally in control of those journeys because only God keeps us. God keeps us. And so when we understand that God keeps us, then we realized that no matter what happens to us, the bottom will never fall out. That the real trick to the whole thing is to dive into those difficult moments, to dive into the darkness, to dive into the suffering, and remain there for a while and let God do what he does best: bring out new life. That's what happened today. Jesus died. He was put into the tomb. He stayed there for a while. In that moment of death and darkness, his disciples stayed there with that pain, that disillusionment, that despair, the anger, the betrayal, and all of it, that was going on within them. They had to live with it for a while and then God did what God does best. He's working in all of that. He's not up there doing other things. He's in all of that working and moving and creating and recreating. And then without anybody even noticing that stone is thrown away from the tomb and Jesus comes out and new life is there.
And nobody even realized it was happening. But then it was, it was discovered. The stone was gone and Jesus was gone. You see? And that's what happens in our own lives, you know, as we delve into the suffering, as we deal with the complexities of our lives, as we live with the anxiety, rather than trying to fight it or control it.
In all of those things, God is there with us, bringing us somewhere. And the ultimate somewhere, which is why the bottom cannot fall out. Because if we truly believe, we truly believe that God keeps us, then when this world can support us anymore, for whatever reason, then we go on to where God is going to bring us to the one to come.
And it doesn't matter what that looks like. It doesn't matter what the details of life eternal is. All that matters is our faith in that fundamental fact that God is going to keep us. And as we fall into the beauty of the moment of that love, as we close our eyes to this world, to the next, we fall into the mystery of love eternal, then God will bring us where we need to be. And our eyes will be open and we will see, and those we leave behind will continue their journeys, but God will be with them too, bringing them to that same place one day.
God made us, brings us to the virtue of faith. Once we take the leap and believe that, then we believe that all Jesus said and all Jesus did is true and it must be true. God made us, God loves us. God loves us, brings us to the virtue of love. Where we see that as the ground of our being and the source for all life and for all holiness. And God keeps us, brings us to the virtue of hope, not hope in anything we can accomplish and do, not hope in the resolution of some crisis that we're going through today, not hope that things are going to change tomorrow for us here. The hope in something bigger and better and brighter is hope and a future for us that never ends. A hope that as God has made us, as God has loved us, God will keep us now and forevermore. Amen.
And that's the good news, but you see, we never seem so excited about that. You get so weighed down with all the other stuff that the joyful good news of the resurrection never gets spoken. Oh, we celebrate it here in our songs, and in our preaching, in our liturgies. But then when we walk out the door, we go back to singing the same old tune again.
The trick tonight is to take what's in here and bring it out there into our workplaces, into how we live our life. Because I tell you as much as we're here today, if every person on this planet understood three things, "God made me, God loves me, God keeps me," the world in which we live today would not look like it does. Absolutely not. Yet we hear from the world that we need to get rid of those things because we need to do them better and we don't do it with faith. It's reversed. And so today we've celebrated once again, the joyful news of resurrection, the joyful news of who we are in Christ, and our eventual becoming one with Christ eternally in heaven.
When we leave this place tonight, let Hallelujah be. Our lips. And when we go back to the stuff of our lives tomorrow, let us do so joyfully, helping others come to see and know what we have found today. That God made us, that God loves us, and that God alone keeps us. Amen. Hallelujah.
Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Learn more about our parish community at www.isidoreandmaria.org. And follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Our music comes free of charge from Blue Dot Sessions in Fall River, Massachusetts. I’m Carol Vassar. Thanks for joining us.