Homily for the Mass of Reparation for Victims and Survivors of Abuse

April 22, 2021
St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas

Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 66
1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28
Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

Philip, one of the first deacons in the life of the Church called and ordained to minister to those in the periphery, is guided by an angel of God along the road to Gaza to encounter a man from Ethiopia whom the author of the Acts of the Apostles describes as an official bureaucrat of the Candace (the title of the reigning Queen of a tribe from Ethiopia) and as a eunuch. The Scripture also tells us that Philip encounters this man reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah,

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

In (his) humiliation justice was denied him.

Who will tell of his posterity?

For his life is taken from the earth.”

The man asks Philip if he understands the reading. The eunuch, who is barely familiar with the teaching of the Law and the prophets, asks for a teacher to explain about whom the words refer. Are they about the prophet himself or someone else? Philip accompanies him and proclaims Jesus to him when the man finally asks freely for the healing waters of Baptism and receives them from the hand of the deacon Philip.

Three points for our reflection in the offering and praying of this Mass of Reparation for Victims and Survivors of Abuse. First, the man who is described to us as a eunuch in the first reading is himself a victim and survivor of abuse. He was physically mutilated as a child by the very bureaucracy which he was currently serving for the pleasure and purposes of the elites of the tribe. Secondly, God through His angel has sent Philip into the deserted wilderness to encounter this man. The man is on the road to Gaza, going away from Jerusalem, the site of the Temple and even more so the site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It is a road in the desert wilderness. He is trying to go home. It is a place that is dangerous and not well traveled. Thirdly, the man is reading the Scripture and has questions that have come to him first because they are words that seem very familiar to him and resonate with his own experience. The words interest him before they lead him to hope.

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

In (his) humiliation justice was denied him.

Who will tell of his posterity?

For his life is taken from the earth.”

The traumatic experience of the abuse and mutilation perpetrated against the man when he was a child was easily overlooked and tolerated, even accepted, as part of the status quo of a system indifferent to his plight and of others like him. A system that held other priorities and in attaining those priorities found the man only as useful to achieving its own ends.

The traumatic experience of the man known as a eunuch has placed him isolated and on a dangerous road going away from the city of salvation. The man is on the peripheries and is traveling there trying to go home. The ritualized worship of the Temple is not enough to save him. The reading of the prophet Isaiah alone does not enlighten him. The encounter with Philip and the conversation that ensues introduces him to Christ. It is Christ who saves him. Christ sends a disciple, a deacon, a servant, a Christian to meet this man, to listen to him, to walk with him, and to be there when the man asks “to descend with him into the waters and arise with him” out of the cleansing and healing waters of Baptism. The baptized man receives a name and with it the authentic and free belonging of friendship with Christ and communion with other disciples.  The healing waters of Baptism wash not only his own sins and their effects but also cleanse and redeem the effects of the sins perpetrated against him; sins that have confused him, isolated him, and have humiliated him. This is gratia sanans — this is healing grace and the redemption that God offers. This is the grace that only God and no one else can give so generously and of which we as disciples, deacons, servants, and Christians can only be powerless but willing and attentive instruments. We can never pretend to be the source of such healing power of God, the grace that God offers fully in Jesus Christ on His own terms of incomparable love, justice, and mercy. It is Christ who saves and heals the man, not ritual, not the cathartic telling of a story, not the religious and philosophical ideas of ancient texts, not the unaided efforts of Philip. Only Christ through His love and gift of the Holy Spirit. It is Jesus Christ who has identified with this man and others like him in descending from heaven and being wounded, humiliated, abused, and slaughtered here by the elite, indifferent of sin, to be raised up over the paralyzing and stultifying and unjust power of death. For Isaiah speaks of Christ:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

In (his) humiliation justice was denied him.

Who will tell of his posterity?

For his life is taken from the earth.”

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles does not reveal this man’s name even after he has been baptized and is rejoicing. I do not know why that is. Perhaps it is because he has many names in that he represents each and all who have experienced the humiliation and denial of justice that the perpetration of sin brings about. Perhaps it is also because in Christ he has received the freedom and capacity to speak his own name as one who belongs to Christ and His Church through communion and not one who is enslaved through possession.

As we offer this Eucharist, we do so for those who remain enslaved to the humiliation and woe of the sins of abuse. We offer this Eucharist that the Lord will spare us from the millstones that are the promised and just destiny of the indifferent and willing agents of sins perpetrated against children. We ask the Lord for forgiveness and for the gift of His Holy Spirit that we might aspire not for elite status in this world, but for greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven exemplified by Jesus with the humble and obedient confidence of a child belonging to Him.