Homily: Fifth Sunday of Easter: 2007

Brothers and sisters, I want to focus today on something in the Second Reading: "I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."(Rev. 21:2) I'd like to think about the "new Jerusalem" as a bride, and I'd like to think about her as Church. We do sometimes call the (Catholic) Church "the Bride of Christ," and I'm thinking of that old song "The Church's One Foundation":
"She is his holy bride/ With his own blood he bought her/ And for her life he died."
And like in a true marriage, they became "one flesh," so much so that when St. Paul was persecuting the Church, Jesus could say: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting ME?" (Acts 9:4 emphasis added).

And we are products of this new life, so that we can even call her "Mother Church" -- our true mother by adoption and by baptism. Okay, so what practical thing can we take from this? Well, who among us is so clinical a person that they can calmly discuss their mother's faults with others without a word of passion in her defense? Or their wife, for that matter? And there we are only talking about ordinary human beings who really ARE flawed and sinful. But we would roundly defend these women against any and all attackers. Good. We are loyal sons and husbands. But how much more must we defend our beloved Mother Church from criticism and hatred, she who is in fact a spotless bride? Yes, yes, we all know that there are sinful people who belong to the Church. As Cardinal Journet wisely said: "The Church is free from sin but not from sinners." We can acknowledge this even as we advocate and defend her spotless origination in the mind of Christ -- bought with his own blood -- engendered in perfection and brought to maturity through these years, step by step since the days of the apostles. As I told an Orthodox friend of mine once who accused the Catholic Church of rank politicking, "Ah, but Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would never leave her and so he never has."

And the other thing I'd like to point out -- and it follows necessarily that all of us are sons and daughters of the Church and Christ -- a family properly so-called and not just a community. A community after all can be just a group of like-minded individuals who join together for a worthy cause: a neighborhood watch group, for instance; or the Lions' Club; or a trade union. All very laudable -- but not a family. A family are all those folks who are even distantly related to us -- whether we like them or not, whether we agree with them or not, whether we are even in the same socio-economic class as they or not. And we must accept them, we must love them and we must, you know, forgive them. That's what families do. Perhaps that's why Jesus said: "This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

. . . Let us pray.