St. Thomas More Chicago

Father Robert Behnke

The Third Sunday of Easter
On this Third Sunday of Easter, today we honor our mothers; our mothers who still live with us on earth, and our mothers who we pray are now in heaven.  A blessed and happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers present today; you each will have a special remembrance in this Mass.
It is more than a little ironic that, during this month of May when the Church celebrates the miracle of Easter and during May gives its special veneration to the Mother of God, and when Hallmark, American Greetings, thousands of FTD florists, Macy’s and Target, and myriads of Catholic children and grandchildren, as well as children and grandchildren who profess other beliefs or even no belief, give thanks to mothers and honor to motherhood, at this very same time it became necessary last Wednesday for the Catholic Charities of Illinois to warn that they may have to halt adoption and foster care services if Illinois law requires them to place children with homosexual couples.  This news story was in the papers, and I heard it once on the radio early one morning last week, but it certainly has not received much news highlight, as far as I can tell.

The Holy Family, our example

Catholic Charities wants legislation making it clear that, when Illinois' new civil union law takes effect on June 1st—in less than a month—they can refer same sex couples to other organizations instead of servicing them, without risking a lawsuit or loss of state money.  So far, that measure has been bottled up in a Senate committee.  …There's a real possibility that we will be forced out of foster care and adoption…, Bob Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, said at a statehouse news conference.  Naturally, promoters of the homosexual agenda in Illinois (who want us to believe that there is no such thing as a homosexual agenda), are countering that Catholic adoption programs have two choices: either to include everyone in their foster care and adoption services, or to choose to cut ties with state government; …If they do not want to let gay couples adopt or be foster parents, fine. Let them do it on their own dime and not on millions of dollars of Illinois taxpayers…, said Rick Garcia, who helped pass the law establishing civil unions in Illinois.  Catholic Charities in Illinois places children only with married couples or single people—not with couples living together without benefit of marriage.  They, in keeping with the 2000-year-old teaching of the Church, consider couples in civil unions to be unmarried and therefore not eligible to adopt or provide foster care through their programs.  They also say their religious beliefs rule out changing that policy and treating homosexual couples in civil unions as if they were married.  Refusing to place children with homosexual couples could open the Catholic Charities to lawsuits, or lead state government to cut off funding.  Catholic Charities in Illinois is the key to foster care in some parts of the state; they now might be forced to halt their services and thus leave certain locales completely without access to foster care and adoption services.  Twenty percent of adoptions and foster care are handled by Catholic Charities in the state of Illinois.  Please consider a practical act of belief, in motherhood, fatherhood, and family, by contacting your state senator and asking him to support SB—Senate Bill—1123—which will, if enacted, exempt religious institutions from having to place children in foster care, or having to place children up for adoption, with same sex couples.
My having been blest to have grown up with one mother and one father, I cannot imagine my having had, instead, two fathers and no mother, or two mothers and no father.  A mother’s love in the life of her child is absolutely unique and irreplaceable.  Just ask someone who has lost their mother, especially if that loss was premature and unexpected, or recent—even if that mother recently lost was greatly advanced in age.  Or ask someone who has had to assume the place of an absent mother in the life of a child—that has to be one of the most difficult challenges on the face of the earth.  My own mother died more than ten years ago; I still miss her terribly, especially on days like today, but I thank God daily for my having had her for 54 years.  So I believe that those who claim that having two fathers and no mother, or having two mothers and no father, is just as good as having a single, unique father and a single, unique mother, are spouting nonsense.  The law of nature—the natural law God has engraved on the heart of every person—the revealed law of God—the example of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—and just common sense—all these realities tell us that one father and one mother is God’s unique and definitive plan for all his children.  Why else would Our Lord, as His final gift to the Church from the altar of the cross, have given us His own Mother to be our Mother—and to be the Mother of the Church?  Why does the Church give such great honor and love to her whom we call Our Blessed Mother, today, and throughout the month of May, in the midst of the season of Easter, the most important and most joyful time in the Church’s liturgical calendar?  The uniqueness of motherhood is absolutely essential for the human family; two so-called mothers (without a father) dilute the uniqueness of the place of mother in the human family, and then the essence of motherhood simply evaporates.
For all Our Lord’s careful explanation of the scriptures to the two disciples in today’s Gospel, yet they still fail to recognize Jesus.  The evidence is right there before them, but they still cannot make the necessary connection; they lack the clarity of mind and heart that comes from absolute faith.  Their minds are so weighed down with the violence of the crucifixion that they cannot imagine how God can bring new life from death.  So Our Lord gives them a Sign, the Sign that He had invested with an absolutely unique meaning at the Last Supper...He took bread, said the blessing  broke it, and gave it to them…  What St. Luke calls The Breaking of Bread (…He was made known to them in the Breaking of Bread…) became the Church’s initial Biblical name for the Holy Eucharist, for the Sacrifice of the Mass.  This Breaking of Bread has a powerful effect on the two disciples; we are told that …their eyes were opened and they recognized Him….  The Sign was His Gift of Himself to them, just as it is His Gift of Himself to all of us, raising the imagination of mind and heart so that we see clearly the reality of what lies before us in our future; a future that is immediate, and a future that is everlasting.
What lies before us now, in our immediate future, is, I am afraid, difficult times—times of suffering, criticism, pain, insult, ridicule—the very same realities that lay in the immediate future of the apostles just after Our Lord’s resurrection—the apostles who did come to see their suffering as a privilege; the apostles, who, Scripture tells us, rejoiced…that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name…of the Lord Jesus; the apostles, who we hear in the first reading would let nothing stand in the way of their professing publicly their absolute faith in the Lord Jesus, His teaching, His will for us, His Church.  The peace and tranquility that many of us are blessed to remember in the life of the Church during the 40s and 50s and the very early 60s—all that has been replaced by disdain for Christ, disdain for His Church and for what it teaches—especially for what it teaches about human life—especially human life in the womb and the human lives of the infirm and the elderly; disdain for what the Church teaches about family, motherhood and fatherhood.  Even if some Catholics—even if most Catholics—decide to roll over and play dead—nonetheless, the Church will survive until the end of time: that is the Easter promise of the Risen Lord.  But if you and I choose not to play dead (because be certain: this is no game to be played), but if we choose instead to imitate the apostles, who—in the words of Peter, the Rock; Peter, the first pope—must obey God rather than men, we have the same Sign, the same Gift, the very same Breaking of Bread, the same Most Holy Eucharist, to strengthen us, to make us prepared for, and to make us spiritually immune to, the ridicule and suffering that will inevitably come our way, now, in the present, but not to last forever.  Before the two disciples in today’s Gospel recognized Our Lord…in the Breaking of Bread…, St. Luke reminds us that they did not understand that it was…necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory….  And we must never lose sight of the truth that, in receiving this Bread of Angels, it is not a corpse we receive; in Holy Communion we receive no dead body, but a Body that is alive forever—the very Body of the Risen Lord, the Pledge of our future glory.  Today especially we remember all our mothers who remained faithful to the end and so whom we have lost but for a little while; we pray that we may remain faithful, so that we might see them again, again alive—alive now with the life of the Risen Lord Jesus.  For all those who remain faithful, Easter assures us that suffering, ridicule, even imprisonment for the Faith, even bodily death, are necessary, but still only a pause, merely a moment, on the way to the joy that will last forever.