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Fire, Stories, Candles, Alleluia and Bells... What next? Well, some of you we’re going to take and douse in water, in the name and the life and the love of our God. And some of you we are going to anoint with oil, with the confirming spirit of our God’s love. And all of you are invited to be nourished at the table of the Lord. This is our most important night, our highest of high holy days. This is our greatest celebration, where we celebrate the faith and gather and recall what it is that makes us a Catholic Christian family. And, as a matter of fact, some of you sixteen are joining that family this evening. So, brace yourselves because I am going to tell you a few facts about our family.... I’m going to tell you some things about our family.

First of all, number one, our family is very old. I have a priest friend, a scholar back East, and ten years ago he wrote in a book and he said on occasion “In the United States today the mean age of priests is fifty. And they are getting meaner every day.” Well, that’s not the “old” that I am talking about. I am talking about two thousand years old, that we go back and believe we were sent on our journey by the death and resurrection of Jesus, by the gospel of Jesus, and by the following of Jesus. Two thousand years old! There are some scholars today, quite a few, some of them believers in Jesus and in God and some total sceptics. And they all agree on three things. With Jesus, there was a movement. There was an execution, and there was continuation.

There was a movement. He had followers. We know he was executed. We know that he was put to death. And we know that it continues. One scholar writes, “Movement, execution and continuation, these three, but the greatest of these is continuation, that in the spirit and power of the Risen Jesus, we can continue to be a family after all these years, despite the heroes and the fools, despite the persecution and being illegal at times, despite being holy and being sinful, despite things of which we are very proud and things of which we are totally shamed, we continue. That is amazing! It’s amazing! Our family is old.

The second thing I want to tell you about our family, the Church, is it is dysfunctional. We are dysfunctional. Some of you knew that already. I mean we are the people who brought you the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Trail of Galileo. As a family, we certainly at times have been dysfunctional. Let me give you two current and somewhat painful examples. Yesterday we received an advisory from the Bishop of Oakland that the civil suit of two brothers who were abused some thirty years ago by a former priest, Robert Ponciroli, will begin. And in the opening arguments we know it will be claimed that the Church aided and abetted in this, deliberately looked the other way. That will be the claim, the claim that abuse was a practice to which the Church and its leaders were indifferent. I think it is unfounded and unfair to say that the Bishops in those days and their co-workers fostered any kind of a climate that would have allowed this to go on. As a matter of fact, our diocese, I think, was the first in the Nation to urge victims to step forward. And we are working hard to make sure that every child is safe. But, the tragic acts of abuse did happen. It did go on. It was undetected and it was unprevented. That ‘s an example of a very dysfunctional family.

Another example: A year ago when Pope John Paul II was healthier, he gathered together the United States Bishops from the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and he said to them, “Participation, consultation and shared responsibility is an intrinsic part of the job of being a bishop.” Well, the sad thing is that it might be necessary to say that. The bishops had to be brought in and told “You have to dialog and participate and talk to people.” And, the even sadder thing is that there are a lot of places where it just ain’t happening. We are a dysfunctional family.

I remember three years ago, Father Dibble met one of our new Catholics, a new convert, someone just through the RCIA. And that man said to him, “I know this is Christ’s church and I know Christ is with this Church because it has survived even its clergy.” It’s amazing that God’s presence and God’s spirit continues to hold us together and pulls us forward into the vision and into the values of the gospel. There was a very popular book among people in ministry, I guess now about twenty or twenty-five years ago, called “The Wounded Healer,” reminding us that we are called even if we are hurt and wounded and far less than perfect, that we must be called to heal one another and to be wounded helpers in our family. Now, no wounds and no healing are an excuse for not being accountable. But all of us are called to share faith, to make this a better Church and to make this a better world.

So, those are the first two things about our family. It is old and it is dysfunctional. (I am tempted to say “...like every family I have ever met...”) The third thing is, and the word is right there, our family means community. We are not alone, in witnessing to our faith or in facing life. You notice, most of the times in the Scripture when Jesus is met and recognized, it’s in a gathering. And we meet Jesus in shared celebration. We meet Jesus in memories and stories. We meet Jesus, and we are supported and we are challenged when we are gathered together, when we tell the story, when we break the bread. The family to which we belong is community.

But the next thing about our family is it is deeply personal. The Risen Jesus seems to get met in gatherings where two or three disciples, as on the road to Emmaus, meet him; where there is night fishing going on in the Sea of Galilee and the fishermen meet him and recognize him; where they gather in the Upper Room, once with Thomas and once without him, and they meet and recognize Jesus. And we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, more than five hundred people experienced and met Jesus. But did you hear tonight’s gospel? Tonight’s gospel reminds us that Mary is all alone and she is looking for Jesus, seeking him, and she runs into him but she thinks it’s the gardener. And she talks to him and she still thinks it’s the gardener. She sees him and talks to him. She still thinks it’s the gardener. And then he turns and he says, “Mary.” He calls her by her first name. Tonight, you’re being called by name into a family where every member has the right and the opportunity of an Upper Room experience of Jesus, meeting the Lord in our gathering, but also a Mary Magdalene experience of Jesus that is personal, that is all your own, and it is unique. We are a family called both to community and a personal relationship with the Lord.

The other thing about our family is it is really all about sacrament.... sacrament. Now, that’s just a fancy word for saying we believe that the invisible God and the power and presence of the love of the invisible God can be met and encountered in the visible. The first and primary sacrament of our God is God’s creation, the Universe itself. Billions and billions and billions of galaxies give us a glimpse at how awesome our God is! And then in wise and holy people, the prophets before us and the saints, they give us a glimpse of what our God is like. But, then, in Jesus Christ, comes the breakthrough of our God into our race, to be fully present to us and to be a model and a prototype of the kind of people that we are called to be, to be a family that works together, that gathers together and that meets the Lord, to be a visible sign of the presence of God.

Last thing, finally, we are a family called to make a difference. Gospel passage after gospel passage tells us that. The vision and message of Jesus tells us that. The history of our family with its heroes and saints tells us that. And people by our side tell us we are called to make a difference. We have a group of parishoners leaving tomorrow for El Salvador, to mark the anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s assassination, that great martyr of our lifetime. Next week, we will be welcoming homeless families and the elderly frail to live in our gym and to minister to them and to make them welcome. We work and lobby and petition for changes in law and for justice in our world. We are called to be a family that makes a difference.

Well, here we are, quite a family, old and dysfunctional, strong and community, but deeply personal, called to be a visible sign of the presence of God and to make a difference in the world. That’s quite a family. So, we start a fire and we light candles and we sing Alleluia! And we ring bells, and we douse you with water because we celebrate and believe in the strength and the presence of our God. We believe in the God of our Lord Jesus Christ who conquered death and any lasting evil, who comes to us with compassion and hope, who comes to us with Resurrection and love. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! Amen.