Homily for 3rd Sunday after Easter, 2022

Homily for Easter 3, 2022

Fr. Tony Melton

The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life

Watch and listen HERE.

On September 14, 1224, a Saturday, Francis of Assisi—noted ascetic and holy man—was preparing to enter the second month of a retreat with a few close companions on Monte La Verna, overlooking the River Arno in Tuscany. Francis had spent the previous few weeks in prolonged contemplation of the suffering Jesus Christ on the cross, and was very weak from protracted fasting. As he knelt to pray in the first light of dawn (notes the Fioretti—the ‘Little flowers of St Francis of Assisi,’ a collection of stories about him),

he began to contemplate the Passion of Christ… and his fervor grew so strong within him that he became wholly transformed into Jesus through love and compassion…. While he was thus inflamed, he saw a seraph with six shining, fiery wings descend from heaven. This seraph drew near to St Francis in swift flight, so that he could see him clearly and recognize that he had the form of a man crucified… After a long period of secret converse, this mysterious vision faded, leaving in his body a wonderful image and imprint of the Passion of Christ. For in the hands and feet of Saint Francis forthwith began to appear the marks of the nails in the same manner as he had seen them in the body of Jesus crucified.

I have always been interested in a phenomenon in the history of the Church called the Stigmata. A handful of people in the history of the Church have received the wounds of Christ on their hands and feet, sometimes their side, sometimes their head. These bleeding wounds often last years, sometimes their whole lives. The most recent case of the Stigmata was less than 60 years ago in Italy. Padre Pio had constantly fresh wounds on his hands and feet, and this was documented by the Church and those outside the Church. What at first was simply fascination at a miracle has developed for me into a deeper meaning. As you heard in the reading of the Fioretti, Francis’ stigmata came as he dove deep into the Sufferings of Christ. So it has been with all who, as St. Paul says, “bear in their bodies the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 6:17)

I think this interesting part of the Church’s experience and history is important for us as we exit Christendom. Up till recently, the Church in the West has enjoyed the comfort and respect of being in the majority. Going to Church helped your business, it got votes, it won the affection and trust of neighbors. These are not bad things at all. We should look forward to when it returns to society. But a danger embedded in societal favor is it robs the Church the clear opportunity for Cruciformity. Cruciformity. That way of patterning our life after suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the path that the Stigmatists point to. Christ validated their intentional suffering for the life of the world by giving them a sign that they were with Him and He with them in their suffering. If the Church cannot adopt the Cruciform life in this post-Christian society, she will fail.

Our subject today is the Cruciform life and how we as Christians can take up all paths of Cruciformity with sure hope because of the Resurrection.

For our text this morning, we will look first at our Old Testament Lesson, the song of Hannah and see how God has embedded an inversion into the fiber of this fallen world (God brings the low, high) and this inversion points to when Jesus went from the Cross to Resurrection, which we will see in the Gospel. To close, we’ll take a look at how we can take this call to cruciformity, armed with the hope of Resurrection, into our life of mission, specifically the cruciform vocation of Motherhood.

Let’s jump in. Please turn in your booklets to page 6 where you will find 1 Samuel 2, the Song of Hannah. Hannah, you remember, was barren, and despised by those around her for being so. She begged God for a child, and was even despised in her begging. And God looked on this woman and blessed her with a son, whom she named Samuel. After she had received him, she composed a song and sang it. This is the song that the Virgin Mary patterned her song after in Luke 2, the Magnificat. What I want you to notice is how Hannah draws attention to the pattern of God’s working of inverting the station of the poor, despised righteous and the rich, powerful heathen. Verse 4, “The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.” Here Hannah speaks of the inverting of human strength. You might hear in this the words of Jesus, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Verse 5, “They that were full have hired out themselves for bread; and they that were hungry ceased: so that the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.” Here Hannah talks about those who are full of food and children, then will be made empty and those without will have much. Now, we need to keep in mind in reading the end of this verse, that Hannah lived in a saner time when children were still thought of as a blessing. To have many of them was regarded by larger society to be good thing. Ironically, and we will discuss this later, having a house full of children is now a clear opportunity for the lowliness and cruciformity that brings God’s inverting deliverance. So, it is a bit flipped in our time how to read verse 5. Verse 7 and 8 speak also of wealth and power. “The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. 8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes.” These same ideas are also mentioned in our Psalm for today, Psalm 113, which is also patterned after Hannah’s song, “He taketh up the simple out of the dust, * and lifteth the poor out of the mire; 7  That he may set him with the princes, * even with the princes of his people. 8  He maketh the barren woman to keep house, * and to be a joyful mother of children.”

Verses 9-10 are very important, because this isn’t at all about class struggle. God is not a Marxist that always takes the side of the poor and powerless because they are poor and powerless. He takes the side of the righteous poor, the righteous weak, the righteous who bear their barrenness in faith that the God who raised up Jesus Christ the from the dead will see their cruciformity, their suffering, and raise them up, too. Take a look at verse 6 of 1 Samuel 2. Go ahead and find it, and you will see that the Resurrection was at the center of even the Old Testament saints’ hope that their Cruciformity would not be for not. “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.”

Ever since the apple was bitten, God has continually elevated the lowly and righteous, the despised and holy, the poor and faithful, because His plan all along was to demonstrate the Great Inversion of all things with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The takeaway for us is that in light of all the stories of how God took the despised and lowly and blessed them, and in light of the Cross and Resurrection we should never shrink back from our Cruciformity. We should hear in the story of Hannah a testimony that whatever suffering and sacrifice we are called to make, the resurrected Lord is right there to assure us that we bear His marks and that He will bless us and will raise us up into everlasting joy.

In case you were wondering, I did not pick these passages for this Sunday. They were handed down from of old, predetermined not only by God but by those who created the Lectionary. And yet 3 out of 4 of our Scripture lessons for today explicitly mention motherhood! The only one we haven’t gone over is from our Gospel, John 16, when Jesus likens the joy of the Resurrection to the joy of a mother who gives birth to a child. Given that the authors of the Lectionary didn’t intend these passages to fall on Mother’s Day, we must ask, “Why all these Mama verses during Eastertide?

One of the reasons is that during Easter, we look back on the world with Resurrection eyes, and we see our sufferings and crosses and curses in a new light. For women, the Curse in Genesis pertained to pregnancy and birth. The act of being a mother, though extremely wonderful, is still tied up in pain of the Curse. Therefore, the Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. If you are a Resurrection Mother, then you enter boldly on this path knowing that whatever sacrifices you give, whatever disdain you received from this Culture of Death, whatever scars you bear in your body, are a participation in the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is your path of Cruciformity, and our God loves to raise up all those who have bring themselves close to the dust, close to the Curse, close to the Cross.

The Maternal Life is a Cruciform Life. It lives out the vocation of Jesus in a unique way. A mother does not say, “This is my body.” She says, “This is my body…which is given for you…I suffer that you may live. I bear this Curse that you may have blessing. My body is food, and in my bosom is safety and comfort.” So, you see, Motherhood is a unique opportunity to live out the cruciformity of Christ in sharp contrast to the way of the world.

Ok. Hannah’s song gives us the pattern of the Faithful. Suffering to Glory. Christ has fully confirmed this pattern by rising from the dead, so now it is Cruciformity to Resurrection. We take this faith into all forms of our Cruciformity, especially that of Motherhood.

To bring this to a close, I wanted to point this a little more directly to our time and place. If it is was a divine coincidence that these passages should fall on Mother’s Day, then it is definitely providential that these passages would come into our ears on the backs of the leaked draft of Dobbs vs. Jackson, the Supreme Court case poised to overthrow Roe vs. Wade. In a way, Motherhood isn’t just a path of Cruciformity. In this Culture of Death, which so resembles that Satanic dragon in Revelation 12 that seeks to devour the infant, I believe that the Church must rise up like that woman in Revelation 12 to protect and nurture the infant. This will have a threefold effect. It will save lives in this world and the next. It will bring the Church closer to our Cruciform Lord through poverty, suffering, and the disdain of the world. But, third, it will be a testimony to this insane culture that devours its young.

The Christians of the 2nd century were known for adopting the children left out to die and raising them as Christians. They were maligned for their good deeds, even accused of cannibalism of infants, yet they continued to live out the Motherly vocation of the Church. Over time, this was a testimony to the pagan society. This is what Peter talks about in our Epistle for this morning. “whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation…For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”

Church, we are at a moment of Truth. If the wicked, dark cloud of Roe v. Wade is lifted from over our nation, then we will have a twofold responsibility. The Church must live out our Cruciform vocation as Mother to protect and nurture. To protect, we must insist on righteous laws based on biblical Truth—that life starts from Conception and that a baby in the womb is a person, in every case, no matter what, and should insist on the value and protection, both medically and judicially, that any other person would receive outside the womb. To speak clearly and insist on righteous laws is the Church living out its Motherly vocation to protect.

But the second part of the Church living out her Motherly vocation is to nurture, to adopt. If the Supreme Court goes through with this, and you want to celebrate, then take first steps to adopt a child. If you can’t, support someone who can. This is a moment of Truth. The Church cannot take a victory lap. This is what Peter says in our Epistle about “using our liberty for a cloke of maliciousness”. The time is now. Life often just comes upon you. Our timing is not God’s timing, especially when it comes to the vocation of Motherhood. I’m learning that a lot right now. But the time is now.

If you lay down your life for the sake of another, God will raise you up again.

If you give your body for the life of another, God will raise you up again.

If you become poor because of your commitment to the vocation of Motherhood, God will bring you out of the dust.

If you incur the stigma of the world, Jesus will draw near to you and remind you that the Stigmata belongs to Him.

Mothers, bless you. You are an icon of our Lord Jesus Christ. Church, you are a Mother to the world. Let us rise up and step into the Cruciformity of sacrifice, poverty, stigma, suffering, knowing that the Resurrected Lord is there to raise us up into Life and Joy. Amen.