Homily for the Passion According to Luke

I will be at St. Isidore this Sunday for all three Sunday morning Masses: 7:30/9:30/11:30 am;  I will preside at the 7:30/9:30 am Masses, but I will be part of the passion proclamation with several readers at all three Masses.

The 7:30 am Mass will be live-streamed. https://stisidore.church/worship-online/

I have mass on Easter Sunday  at 7:30 AM and 9:30 AM

Frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

When they lay hands on Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, in all four of the passion narratives, someone grabs a sword and cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant. Only in Luke's Gospel does Jesus touch the servant's ear and heal him. 

In all four Gospels, Simon Peter denies Jesus three times. But only in Luke's Gospel does Jesus turn and look at Peter. I think Peter sees understanding and forgiveness in Jesus' eyes. 

Only in Luke does Jesus speak words of forgiveness from the cross. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

Luke's Gospel is also unique in that all through this Gospel, Luke uses a pattern of telling the good news in parallel stories. The angel Gabriel appears to both Zechariah and Mary to announce the conception of John and Jesus. On the way to crucifixion, Simon of Cyrene carries the cross, and then Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. 

In the darkness that surrounds the cross, the repentant criminal, the people, and the centurion are able to see God at work in Jesus. They contrast the Jewish leaders, the soldiers, and the unrepentant criminal who are blind to God's action. 

Only Luke notes that a great crowd of people had gathered as though to a spectacle, and when they saw how he died, they turned back toward the city, beating their breasts. We understand this action as a sign of repentance. We strike our breasts during the confeder at Mass. For Luke, ordinary people are not only not complicit in the death of Jesus, but they repent of what has been done to him. 

The repentant criminal and the centurion are also somewhat alike in their positive understanding of what God is doing in Jesus. The criminal, who was Jewish, believed that Jesus was the Messiah in spite of the fact that Jesus was a condemned man. As a condemned criminal himself, as far as Judaism was concerned, he was a religious and social outsider. 

These things were true of the centurion as well. Even though, as a gentile, he was also a religious and social outsider, he had tremendous insight into what is happening in Jesus. In Matthew and in Mark, the centurion says, "Truly, this man was God's son." In Luke, however, the centurion said, "This man was innocent beyond doubt." While the Greek word can be translated "innocent," the better translation is righteous. 

The centurion sees that Jesus is in a right relationship with God. Jesus trusts in his God until the very end, even in the midst of suffering. At the cross, the centurion states the truth. He can see a person who is truly righteous, even though the Jewish religious leaders cannot. 

In chapter 4, Jesus preached in his hometown of Nazareth. He proclaimed good news to the poor and announced that God's salvation would extend beyond Israel, even to the gentiles. The hometown crowd responded in anger and attempted to throw Jesus off the brow of the hill. When the centurion praises God at the cross, the sermon at Nazareth is being fulfilled.