2024 Mass of Reparation for Victims and Survivors of Abuse
Saturday in the Octave of Easter
April 6, 2024
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Acts 4:13-21
Psalm 118:14-21
Mark 16:9-15
“Though the Lord has indeed chastised me, yet He has not delivered me to death. Open to me the gates of justice and I will enter them and give thanks to the Lord.” These words of Psalm 118 which we have prayed are exemplified in a particular way in the person of Saint Mary Magdalene who is the first to experience the risen Lord Jesus. The Gospels and Tradition of the Church tell us that Mary Magdalene did not recognize the risen Lord to be Jesus until He speaks her name. Her name, like all human names, carries with it a character of the uniqueness of her person, her dignity, that is the most intimate part of her humanity — even more so than the aggregate of human nature. Her name is what identifies her as being unique as a person in the eyes of Christ — uniquely created and uniquely redeemed. Her name is so much more than a pronoun that cloaks the person in anonymity and isolation. She was denied her name when she was dominated by the seven demons that the Lord cast out from her — the demons that not only included her own sin but even more dramatically the effects of the sins of others perpetrated against her with its resulting anonymity and isolation.
So, we can understand her frustration in light of her perseverance amidst her hope when she runs to the Eleven and proclaims to them more than her experience, she proclaims to them the Truth that Jesus is truly risen from the tomb and that death has been conquered, only to receive from the Eleven Apostles, who should know better, disbelief born of hardness of heart. They don’t believe her when she tells them the Truth. They refuse to believe her not because the news is incomprehensible in light of Christ’s Gospel; they refuse to believe her out of fear and stubbornness that are the marrow of the intractability of sin. Perhaps also they refused to believe Mary Magdalene because they cynically preferred the ease of believing the public opinion about her reputation instead of who she truly is — a person loved and healed by Jesus So, when the risen Lord Jesus appears to the Eleven while they were at table, he rebukes them for this hardness of heart and their refusal to believe Mary Magdalene and those also who aligned with her proclamation of the Risen Lord, those on the road to Emmaus, who had seen Him after He had been raised. Disbelief born of a hardness of heart is incompatible with true Faith in the Resurrection.
This description of the Eleven in the Gospel is markedly different from the description that we hear in the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. In that reading we see Peter and John, two of the Eleven, who are publicly noted for their boldness in healing a man and proclaiming the Good News that Christ is risen from the dead. Their proclamation is made with words and actions — and there is a humility about Peter and John in their witness — they are not noted for their education or erudition — they possess a confidence that comes from the integrity of the conscience aligned with the Truth — a conscience that is right with God. Their witness is now met not only with disbelief from the Sanhedrin — the corrupt religious leadership of that time — but also with a command from the Sanhedrin to be silent and to stop talking about the Truth — the victory over sin and death won by Christ through His death and Resurrection — to stop talking about the Truth that everyone in Jerusalem knows to be true but about which few are willing to admit or speak. They are forbidden to speak by those who are afraid and hardened of heart.
Disbelief born of a hardness of heart and coercion to silence about the truth are in part why we are here today: to pray for God’s Grace for our own conversion and to make reparation for the sins of the Church’s leaders, ministers, and members who have too easily embraced the stances of disbelief and coercion to silence in the face of those who speak the truth in Christ about the truth of sexual abuse perpetrated in the past by the Church’s leaders, ministers, and members against them and their families. We are here to seek forgiveness and to accept it gratefully along with the appropriate rebuke from the risen Lord as we gather at this Eucharistic banquet table just as the Eleven did after that first Easter.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have written in the Preamble of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, “We feel a particular responsibility for the ministry of reconciliation which God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, has given us. The love of Christ impels us to ask forgiveness for our own faults but also to appeal to all — to those who have been victimized, to those who have been offended, and to all who have felt the wound of this scandal — to be reconciled to God and to one another.”
This reconciliation can only come if it is born of authentic contrition. We cannot be children of the Resurrection without a deep and abiding recognition of the Cross and Crucifixion of Jesus for our sins. I was recently reminded of an insight about the Apostle Peter that Joseph Ratzinger offered as a theologian years before he became Pope Benedict XVI. I think that it applies to all of us here, but particularly to those of us who are called to servant leadership within the Church. This insight is that Peter is born Simon but the underlying tension in his life is that he is called by Jesus to be Peter. Throughout his life as exemplified in the Gospels, in the Acts of Apostles, and even in the written testimony of his own martyrdom, we see that he struggles between these two poles — Simon the weak and sinful man and Peter the Rock entrusted by Jesus with the keys. The heart of the infallibility of Peter’s keys is his authentic contrition for his sins with a firm purpose of amendment to change, not just remorse, which leads to reconciliation — true reconciliation — for which Christ died. It is that true reconciliation that is the fruit born of authentic contrition, mercy, and forgiveness that will enable us to sing with all the saints in glory the Psalm that we have sung today, “Though the Lord has indeed chastised me, yet He has not delivered me to death. Open to me the gates of justice and I will enter them and give thanks to the Lord.”
The Mass of Reparation for Victims and Survivors of Abuse can be viewed here:
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