Peace Be With You

 

Today’s annually repeated gospel [John 20:19-31] captures the novelty and uniqueness of the resurrection in its account of the disciples’ two encounters (one week apart) with the Risen Christ. No one witnessed Jesus’ actual resurrection. What was witnessed initially was just an empty tomb – an important condition for the resurrection to be believed, but insufficient evidence in itself. Something more had to happen, and something more did happen – in the form of a series of encounters in which the Risen Lord demonstrated to his disciples that he was the same Jesus who had lived and died (hence the wounds in his hands and side), now alive again in a unexpectedly new and wonderful way (hence his presence among them, although the doors were locked.)

 

Fearful for their safety, the disciples had hidden behind locked doors. Perhaps, this was the same “upper room” where they had so recently eaten the Last Supper and where they would gather again after the ascension to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. If so, how appropriate! Since apostolic times (long before the invention of the modern weekend), Sunday, the first day of the week, has been the special day, the irreplaceably privileged day, when Christians assemble in their churches to encounter Christ, the Risen Lord, present through the power of his Holy Spirit in the sacramental celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

 

On that first day of the week, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” How we long to hear those words today in a world again at war. Not for nothing have the Church's bishops for centuries used these words of Jesus as an official greeting. Not for nothing did Pope Leo make those his first public words to the world on the day of his election almost a year ago. Surely, that was no mere wish on his part! Christ, the Risen Lord offers us his peace - not just some transient social or political peace, however, but the peace that conquers fear. It is clear enough from the locked doors just how fearful the disciples must have been.

 

Many of us in fact spend much of our lives behind locked doors – literally so in our modern urban way of life - a sensible practice perhaps, but one obviously rooted in fear.

 

There are also the many locked doors one doesn’t see, but which one feels, nonetheless. We may not all be afraid of exactly the same things the disciples were, but our fears are no less real, wounding us in all sorts of ways, wounds we carry within us, concealing them as best we can.

 

Yet, when Jesus came to his disciples that first day of the week, far from concealing, he showed them his hands and his side – and the disciples rejoiced. As the absent Thomas acutely appreciated, Jesus’ wounded hands and side reveal the continuity between the Jesus they had known and loved, who really and truly died on the cross, and the now-living Risen Christ, who commissions his Church to heal the world’s wounds and impart his forgiveness in the sacraments of his Church: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”

 

For the resurrection was not just some nice thing that happened to Jesus - and then leaves the rest of us and everything else in the world completely unchanged. It was – and is – the foundation of what the first letter of Peter, from which we just heard [1 Peter 1:3-9], calls an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading future inheritance to which, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we already have access here and now in the present.

 

Like Thomas, none of us were there on that first day of the week, but we are here today - on this first day of this week. The first day of the week, the day on which God began the work of creation, has become our day of re-creation, the beginning not just of another week but of a whole new way of life, pointing us forward to the fullness of that new creation in which, living for ever with the Risen Christ, we will finally become most fully human.

Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 12, 2026.

No Ordinary Fishing Trip

 

Modern pilgrims in Israel easily sense the contrast between the Judean desert (where Jerusalem is) and the relatively lush, green of Galilee (where today’s Gospel [John 21:1-14] story is set). Renewed annually by winter’s life-giving rains, the land around the large lake the Gospel calls the Sea of Tiberias (more commonly called the Sea of Galilee) is at its greenest in spring. It was to that place, at this season of the year, that Peter and six other disciples returned. It had been from those familiar shores that Jesus had originally called them to follow him. Now they’d come home – back to what they knew best. They went fishing.

But this was to be no normal fishing trip!

There’s a church on the shore that marks the supposed site of this event. In front of the altar is a rock, traditionally venerated as the stone on which the risen Lord served his disciples a breakfast of bread and fish. Staples of the Galilean diet, bread and fish seem to be staples of the Gospel story itself! Just a short walk away is another church, marking the site where, not so long before, Jesus had fed 5000+ people with five loaves and a few fish. Presumably, the disciples would have remembered that earlier meal. As surely we should as well, as we also assemble here at the table lovingly set for us by the risen Lord himself, who feeds us with food we would never have gotten on our own.

Typically, in these stories of the risen Lord’s appearances, while he is certainly the same Jesus the disciples had followed in life and who had died on the Cross, something about him is now different. Hence, the dramatic moment when Jesus is recognized, as when the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” But recognizing the risen Christ is but the beginning of a life lived following the risen Lord. So, even before being formally entrusted with his special mission, Peter leads the way, dressing up for the occasion, jumping into the sea and swimming to Jesus ahead of the others.

As his role requires, Peter here is already leading the Church, leading here by example. His example illustrates for the rest of us what it means, first, to recognize the risen Lord and, then, actually to follow him.

Homily for the Friday within the Octave of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 10, 2026.

American Pope

When Donald Trump was triumphantly returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, he immediately became ex officio the most important, the most powerful, the most prominent American in the world. Then, exactly 11 months ago, on May 8, 2025, somewhat surprisingly and unexpectedly (at least to most people), Robert Cardinal Prevost, a Chicago-born, Augustinian Friar, who had been a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, was elected Pope - instantly blowing up the traditional expectation that no American could or would ever be elected Pope. In 2025, an American-born Pope immediately became ex officio the other most important, the other most powerful, the other most prominent American in the world. What this means - and the hope that Pope Leo XIV's election may bring to the Church and the world in the era of President Trump - is the focus of CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb's American Hope: What Pope Leo VIV Means for the Church and the World.

Despite the conventional wisdom that no American would be elected Pope, Lamb argues that Trump's re-election caused a recognition that the U.S. role in the world was changing. He claims that Cardinal Prevost was on his own short list of papabili. Even so, when the white smoke appeared so quickly on the second day of the conclave, he assumed the winner was Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State, who had been widely seen as the frontrunner. But, when Cardinal Mamberti announced Prevost's name, Lamb's "previous feelings of deflation turned to excitement."

I too had heard Prevost's name mentioned prior to the conclave, but I still assumed that his American nationality would count against him. In fact, that very morning when someone had asked me if I thought there would be a new Pope that day and who it might be, I had answered that the only thing we could predict for certain was that it would not be an American! 

Of course, having been born in the USA is not the only noteworthy aspect of Pope Leo's background and life story. Lamb rightly highlights his membership in (and his leadership of) the Order of Saint Augustine and his missionary service in Peru - both as important aspects of who Leo is and as important considerations which made an American-born pope's election even possible. "He would not be pope were it not for the years he served in Peru, a time which profoundly shaped him and which brought him to the attention of Pope Francis." He was thus the "least American" of the American cardinals. His Augustinian identity, Lamb also argues, wrote "community, contemplative prayer and unity" into his "governing style," while his two terms as the Augustinians' Prior General had given him "insights into the growing churches of Africa and Asia, and experience of leading a complex, international Catholic community."

Lamb is also extremely preoccupied with demonstrating continuity between Pope Francis and Pope Leo - even while acknowledging Leo's "balance and moderation" and his desire to be "an expert listener and community builder," qualities that somewhat differentiate him from his more polarizing predecessor.  The author's emphasis on continuity, even while recognizing the ways in which Leo is temperamentally different from his predecessor, almost seems like a case of protesting too much. Also, given that Leo in certain respects represents the Global South as much as the U.S., Lamb devotes much more space than one would therefore expect to contentious first-world issues (like women's ordination, which Francis himself in continuity with his predecessors had rejected). 

Nonetheless, Leo's Americanness is an important theme of Lamb's analysis. He does not expect Leo to seek deliberate confrontation with Trumpism. "He is measured and careful with his language, and far less provocative than his predecessor." On the other hand, while Francis was easily criticized as someone who "simply did not know enough about the United States," that "cannot be said of an American pope."

Leo's papacy offers an alternative vision to the one emanating from the White House, a vision that is built on unity and spirituality and which is allergic to divisive rhetoric and polarization. Lamb quotes Fordham University's David Gibson: "While Leo's exposition of Catholic teachings will contradict many of Trump's policies and statements, it is Leo's character that stands in contrast to Trump, both as a Christian and as an American. ... This is about two diametrically opposed ways of being in the world."

Lamb contrasts Pope Leo not only with President Trump but also with the most prominent American Catholic layman, Vice President JD Vance, who was received into the Church in 2019 and claims his conversion was influenced by Saint Augustine. "JD Vance takes his faith seriously, and the story of his conversion, which he laid out in The Lamp magazine, reveals someone who has made a sincere engagement with the Catholic faith, and who wrestles with how to apply the teachings of Christianity in his life. Yet in the vice president of the United States, Leo also faces someone whose Catholic faith is tied to a political worldview." Vance is a "post-liberal," who "believes that society is better served by stronger communitarian and social bonds rather than by the autonomy of the individual." Such ideas resonate with some traditional Catholic teaching and in their more extreme form have become increasingly prominent in a revived ideology of Catholic integralism, an alternative which inevitably challenges the post-conciliar Catholic Church's apparent accommodation with liberal democracy.

Meanwhile, in his first Urbi et Orbi Easter Message a few days ago, Pope Leo issued a challenge which it would be hard not to understand. "We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people. Indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow. Indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel." One of the most damaging consequences of our current politics is precisely how it has normalized violence, hatred, division, and the economic and social consequences of inequality and bigotry. The Pope's challenge is both perennial and contemporary: "let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil." 

Lamb concludes American Hope with his worry about whether Pope Leo's "low-key style, his desire to see all sides of the argument, and his sometimes studious aversion to making news headlines, could be dangerous if it creates a perception of a papacy that has no clear narrative." He contrasts this with President Trump, whose "success is his uncanny ability to shape the narrative" and with Pope Francis, who "within hours of his election established a clear narrative for his papacy." Lamb worries Leo could cede the narrative to outside events as he believes happened with Pope Paul VI. 

There may be something to this argument. In contrast, however, I would suggest that Pope Leo's "low-key style," etc., may be among his great assets. Trump is bold. (So, in different ways, was Pope Francis.) The alternative to such Trumpian norm-shattering boldness that America and the world so desperately needs lies precisely in calm, balance, moderation, intelligent discourse, and - above all - empathy, all of which have already formed the basis for Pope Leo's counter-narrative. Lamb himself hints at this when he suggests that Leo "embodies the very qualities people hold up to be the best of America, at a moment when it's often said that the American President is undermining them."

The DayAfter

 

God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses. So proclaimed Peter in the reading we just heard from the Acts of the Apostles. Every day for the next seven weeks - from Easter to Pentecost - the Church reads from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke's wonderful sequel to his Gospel. It is Luke's artful account of the experience of the very first Christians, the first ones to experience in their own lives the effects of Jesus' resurrection. Acts also recounts the early growth of the Church, as the good news of Jesus' resurrection spread from Jerusalem all the way to Rome.

During the 40 days of Lent, we identified ourselves with our catechumens preparing for baptism, renewing our own experience of conversion to Christ and his Church. Now, during these 50 days of Easter, we identify ourselves with the newly baptized, recalling the experience of the very first Christians, gathered like them into one Church by the power of the Risen Christ present among us.

(You surely noticed the reference in the Opening Prayer to the newly baptized. In ancient Christian Rome, this whole week was especially devoted to them. They wore their new white robes to Mass every day. On Saturday, back at the Lateran Basilica where they had been baptized, they removed and stored their white robes.Then next Sunday, at St. Pancras, they would appear for the first time in ordinary clothes.)

Yesterday, the Gospel reading proclaimed the discovery of an empty tomb. That was an essential but incomplete sign that God had done something new and wonderful in raising Jesus from the dead. The disciples needed to experience more, and so do we, which is why we need to hear this wonderful story of how the disciples were transformed from frightened followers of a dead man into Spirit-filled witnesses of Christ's resurrection.

We read and hear the resurrection’s effects on the disciples in the Gospel accounts of the Risen Lord's appearances and in the preaching witness of Saint Peter and others in the Acts of the Apostles. We rad and hear the resurrection’s effects on the world n people’s responses to the apostles’ amazing story and in how the story has since spread, in the dynamism at the heart of the Church’s existence that has propelled it outward in 2000 years of world-transforming activity.

Finally, the resurrection's effects become evident in us, transformed in mind and changed in heart, by the unique power of this utterly unexpected event, which has glorified (almost beyond recognition) the humanity Jesus shares with each of us, and which has brought us together in a way in which nothing else could have, empowering us (despite all the world's bad news that competes for our daily attention) not so much with new knowledge as with a new hope.  If, as the saying goes, “knowledge is power,” hope - Christian resurrection hope - is even more so!

Homily for Easter Monday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church NY, April 6, 2026.

American Religious Revival???

Holy Week was traditionally when newspapers and magazines tended to highlight religious news coverage. For obvious reasons coverage of religiious news has grown in recent years and has become increasingly year round. Still, Holy Week does tend to bring out some particularly thoughtful pieces. Among them, this year are two that I found especially interesting. Both appeared on the Tuesday of Holy Week (March 31).

In The Atlantic, staff writer Luis Parrales published "The Real Religious 'Renewal' Happening in Gen Z" [https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/03/christian-revival-generation-z/686612/].

Parrales sets the scene by describing a weekly Sunday evening "Young Adults" session at the Dominican Friars' St. Joseph's Church in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Weekly, some 150 young people, primarily ages 21-35, mostly young professionals attend these discussions, which appear as part of an apparent revival of religious interest among younger Americans. This Easter, according to Parrales, nearly 90 people are set to join the Catholic Church at St. Joseph's, another 70 at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral Basilica nearby, some 50 at Harvard's Catholic Center, about another 50 at Arizona State, 40 at the University of Michigan. Moreover, the numbers of those to be initiated into the Church at Easter seem to be up in many other parishes as well, as is Mass attendance - as is devotional life (e.g., Eucharistic adoration and contemplative forms of prayer like the Rosary). Certainly something is happening.

To counter the obvious optimism that these trends may invite, the author offers some sobering demographics. "Members of Gen Z are less likely than people in other generations to profess belief in God without doubts, for example, according to the 2024 General Social Survey. Gen Zers are also the least likely to attend religious services regularly and the most likely to never attend them. Many weren’t brought up religious, and many of those who were have left the faith. Only 28 percent of adults born in the 2000s to highly religious families remain highly religious, according to Pew. And despite the claim that Gen Z men are leading a resurgence in traditional Christianity, they in fact are simply leaving the Church at a slower rate than women are."

The worst statistic of all: "For every Catholic convert, for example, roughly eight Catholics leave the faith." And classic American revivals like the 18th and 19th century Great Awakenings emerged "in multiple places" and galvanized "a statistically significant portion of the population." On the other hand, "some of history's most consequential periods of religious renewal have been led by particular people in particular places, often not as representatives of a new common culture but as a committed counterculture."

Two things can be true at the same time. Christendom is not coming back - at least not anytime soon. Nor can the Christian cultural hegemony that characterized the U.S. from the Second Great Awakening more or less through the 1950s be expected to revive. On the other hand, the good news is still being preached and increasingly being heard by those disposed to do so. "Most Gen Zers may not have questions about Christianity or faith, but those who do are seeking answers."

The broader cultural question. is the subject of a very different piece by NY Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, "Can Christianity Be Restored to the Center of American Life?" [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/opinion/religion-revival-america.html].

Anyone familiar with Douthat's work will know that the cultural role of religion in American society has long preoccupied him (cf. his earlier book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics). Douthat's present concern in this article whether "a Christian center can be restored in American life." By that, he means "a set of religious beliefs and institutions that are embraced and respected in the broad middle of the country, cultivate a widely shared interpretation of the American story and operate effectively at the elite level, informing political conduct and intellectual arguments even among nonbelievers."

For Douthat, we once had such a religious center in the institutions of mainline Protestantism, which "went into steep and perhaps terminal decline" between the 1960s and the 1980s. Here he draws on political theorist Joshua Mitchell's argument ("Whither the Reformation in America?) that "the relationship between the Protestant tradition and the American idea" was founded on a "civilizational wager" that modeled modern American society on biblical Israel's "sense of divine mission and a covenantal relationship with God."

Of the possible successors to the old mainline Protestantism, Mitchell regarded evangelicalism "as fundamentally anti-worldly," and Catholicism "and the intellectual conservatism that it has ended up powerfully influencing" as too Old World. A third alternative, "the direct heir of the defunct Protestant establishment" is woke progressivism, which, however is. neither Protestant nor Christian anymore.

Based on Mitchell's generalizations, Douthat argues that to "lead and shape America, a religious tradition would need to be, first, worldly in the sense of relating in a serious way to a complex cultural and political and intellectual landscape where many people do not share its beliefs." Secondly, it would need to believe in an American "national mission and sacred destiny." Thirdly, it would need to be actually Christian.

He agrees that unworldly evangelicalism is insufficient "to form and shape an intellectual elite and to engage politically outside of Manichaean categories." Catholicism's insufficiency "is its still uncertain relationship to the American drama as a whole — not because most Catholics in the United States aren’t patriotic, but because a vision of America as a promised land and almost-chosen people still does not integrate easily with Catholic ideas and categories." (I might add that, as Catholicism become ever more associated with the global South and less with Europe and North America, that "relationship to the American drama as a whole" will likely become, if anything, even more, not less, uncertain.)

As for the third alternative, according to Douthat, "the insufficiency of woke post-Protestantism is that it believes in sin but not in God."

Thus, this Holy Week at least, neither author envisions a recovery of American Christendom. That said, an alternative model of a Great Awakening in an authentic but more modest, more intentional, more diasporic movement of grace can yet be detected among our not quite so secular almost chosen people.