Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/09/20 Re-Claimed and Re-Named

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Homily from Holy Thursday, the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. God speaks your true name: "Mine." Our name is our identity. Christ has covered our given name with His blood. And now we have a new name: we are “His.” Mass Readings from April 9, 2020: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 Psalms 116:12-13, 15-181 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15

So I was thinking about the beginning of, we just, this is the last, actually, Lent is over. We've begun the Holy Thursday liturgy. That means that to whatever you gave up for Lent, you can do it now, I guess. Not really, just kidding. But Lent is over, and it has been an entire season of, a little note on this. Actually, when it comes to Lent, or when it comes to the season, we're just entering. So this Mass doesn't end. today. This Mass doesn't end tomorrow. This mass doesn't end until we conclude the Easter vigil.

So as we're praying, you know, just realize, okay, we're not, there's no final blessing at the end of Mass. It is we just kind of depart in silence. And the idea behind that is like that this isn't concluded because we're going to journey with Jesus. So here is Holy Thursday where Jesus gives us the priesthood, he gives us the Eucharist, he shows what it is to truly serve, shows shows us what it is to truly love. We go with him into the Githemeny. We go with him through the night. We go with him with him through his passion and crucifixion. We go with him to hell. This is a descent to hell and we rise with him. That's the pattern. So there's no ending to this Mass.

It just keeps, well, Saturday night is the ending. And so my invitation is we've just concluded Lent. We're now just beginning the three holiest days in the year. Just like there's holy places, there's holy times. Now God is everywhere, he's every when, but there's some places that he's touched in a particular way. And there's some times he touches in a particular way. and this is one of those times. But so is Lent, right?

So so is Lent. We've been journeying. If you remember, just go back to Ash Wednesday in your mind and just remember when at the Ash Wednesday Mass, there were ashes placed on your forehead. And you either said, remember your dust, into dust you shall return, or repent and believe in the gospel. Those ashes are a sign of repentance,

but they're a sign of Christ conquering, the sign of his victory, even in the midst of death, ashes and cross. But one of the things that he tells us is he tells us our name. This is the beginning. This is what we're talking about right now. One of the things Jesus tells us, the church reveals to us, what Jesus has called us, he reveals our name.

And when we are signed with those crosses, our name, that's Jesus saying, you want to know who you are. You are mine. Like, that's our name. That our name becomes, we're his. He calls us mine. and we say we're his. And that's how we started, that's how we started, this whole season of Lent.

I was thinking about the power of names and the importance of names, and when someone gets their name wrong, and then it's like, what the heck, people rename each other when it comes to giving nicknames and stuff like this. But I was thinking specifically when it comes to the first reading today from the book of Exodus. So here's the people of Israel, and they're living in Egypt. And if you know anything about Egyptians, is, or the Egyptian culture back then is they believed in the immortality of the person. They believed that we exist beyond death.

That's one of the reasons why they had mummies, they had temples, these kind of things, is because they believed that you could exist after you died. They believed in life after death. But you had to have the five things needed to persist in order for you to exist. So your body, that's why the mummification. That was one thing. Another thing was your shadow, for whatever reason. They believed that if your shadow still existed, then you still existed.

Your character traits, I don't know how those would keep it to exist, but that's what they believe, if your life force, your spirit, your soul, kind of their idea of the soul existed. But there's a fifth thing that had to keep existing or else you ceased to exist. And that was your name. That if your name was blotted out, if your name was forgotten, if your name was never... There's this guy named Banksy. I don't know if you ever heard of Banksy. He has this great quote.

He says, every person dies twice. The first time is when you stop breathing. And the second time is the last time someone ever utters your name. Because that's the truth by all of us. At some point we're all going to be forgotten by anyone alive on this earth. The last time someone ever utters your name is a second death. There's kind of this similarity, right, between these Egyptians that believe that, no, your name had to continue to exist in order for you, had to continue to persist in order for you to exist.

And so what they would do is they would carve their names in order to exist. would carve their names into stone. So if you go to like the archaeological sites, you can see all over the place on these stones, on these temples, wherever they found like a permanent kind of thing like stone, like permanent thing like rock, they would carve their names into the stone. They would carve their names into the rock because like, no, I continue to exist. In fact, there are some pharaohs who had been so upset with their wives that they erased their names.

Erased all trace of their names from, you can see where they were eliminated. They were named for carved out of history. out of history in order to basically say you no longer exist not even in memory, not even in immortality, you don't exist even in death. Because the names are that important. Our names are that important. They represent us. You know, this is even in the Old Testament.

Probably know, in the book of Daniel, when the people of Israel were exiled again. Not only were they're kind of like enslaved in Egypt, but they were exiled at Babylon. And there were four men, Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and M. Michael, right? So those are their Hebrew names. And those Hebrew names meant something. But they meant, Daniel, his name meant that God is my judgment, El, right? Daniel, L, it referred to Yahweh God, the God. God is my judge. Michael names means who is like God. It's basically Michael. The name Azariah means God has helped. So Yah is, no name for Yahweh, right? God has helped, the God has helped.

And Hananiah is God has been gracious. So every one of their names, was connected to the God who knew them, the God who created them, God who formed them, the God they belonged to in the covenant. And then they get exiled to Babylon, and the king gives them all new names. And he gives them the name, Belt of Chazar is Daniel's name, and that means Bell will protect. Bell was one of the Babylonian gods. So he takes away the fact that here is Daniel, what you mean? No, God is my judge. The God is my judge. And no, no, no, this other God, Bell will protect.

And Hananii was renamed Shadrach, which means inspired of Akhu, another Babylonian god. Abedigo, Azariah was Abednego. And that means servant of Nego, which is another god in Babylon. And the Meshach was renamed Mishak, meaning belonging to Akku. You can see how devastating this would be for Daniel, Hanani, Azari, Mishael. If someone says their name, and they're thinking like, no, because I belong to that God. His name is part of my name. Why? Because my true name is His.

Well, God looks at the people, the covenant, and says, you're mine. And what is it the one who dominates? Try to say. No, no, no, no. You don't belong to the God. You're going to belong to Aku. You're going to belong to Nego. You're going to belong to a bell. To erase someone's name. It's to give them a different identity.

And so what happens? Here is the people of Israel, and they're living as slaves in Egypt. And when there are slaves in Egypt, right, for four generations, of 300 plus years, what happens is they begin living like Egyptians, like they begin thinking like Egyptians, they begin walking like Egyptians. Sorry. Okay, but they begin living in homes like Egyptians. And they begin believing in building their homes like the Egyptians, as I said, how did Egyptians

build their homes? Well, their homes were made of clay just like everything else. go to Egypt, there are no homes left because those homes were just made out of mud and clay. What was permanent were temples. What permanent were the pyramids. What was permanent was the doorway to the homes. So even though the Egyptians lived in homes made out of clay, made out of mud, their doorways were made of stone.

This is really critical, right, for the first reading. Their doorways are made a stone. And upon those doorways, what you would do. do, if you were an Egyptian family or if you're a Jewish family living in Egypt, you would carve your names into the stones to say, I exist, to say, this, I still am. That that's my name and that's who lives and even after I die, I will continue to live because my name is written in stone. It's written in something that's permanent. It's written in such a way that it cannot be erased. Like the king of Babylon tried to do.

do with Daniel and Hennonai and Azari and Mishah trying to erase it by changing their names. And so now you have the story, right? Where the Lord God says through Moses, okay, here's the night of the Passover. You take a lamb. You slaughter it in the evening twilight, roast its flesh of bitter herbs, and you eat that flesh, eat the flesh of the lamb, and eat it just something else, right? You do something not just eat the flesh of the lamb, you take the blood of the lamb that was sacrificed for you, and you mark it on the doors.

Well, that would be the most obvious, right? To make a big cross, your big X on your door, or make a big cross on your door. That'd be really fitting. But no, he says, mark the doorposts and the lintel of your homes. Why would that be the case? Well, now I think we know.

Why would the Lord God say, through Moses? Okay, paint your doorposts, paint your lintle with the blood of the lamb. Why? Because your name was written on those doorposts. Your name was written on the lintel. And what it's saying is this, is that to the angel of death, to justice, to justice. These people who live in this home are covered by the blood of the lamb

to justice, the angel of justice, the angel of death, that angel is saying, no, these people are covered by the mercy of the lamb. That their names will exist, that they will only exist if they're covered by the blood of the lamb. That if they're not at least one member of this household will be dead by mourning. And so we recognize, like, this is the incredible gift. And this foreshadows, what? Eucharist, obviously. Because on the night of Passover, on this night, what does Jesus do? At the Passover feast, he says, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body. Jesus is the new

lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. Eat it. And you'll be given what they were given in the Old Testament, except something even more. In the Old Testament, they were given freedom and they were given life. Take this chalice of wine. Take this all of you and drink from it. This is the blood, my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant. Poured out for you. And it has just realized this, this fullness, the fulfillment of everything God had promised in the book of Exodus, that every Jew had been doing for thousands of years up to this night where Jesus says, this is the new blood of the new and eternal covenant. When you drink it, what happens is the door to your body, the mouth is marked.

You are marked. You are covered by the blood of the Lamb. See, here's Jesus who is the fulfillment. Here's Jesus who names us and he says, you're mine. Here's Jesus who claims us, he says, you're mine. Just like at the beginning of Lent, with ashes. This is your new name, mine. This is who you are, you're mine.

But when you come to this night, and this is the last thing, we come to this night, and we can look at our lives and think, I have not lived like I'm his all Lent, that I've taken my name back. my name back. Like there's an evil king, there's an evil one who keeps trying to rename me. Keeps trying to make me forget who has claimed me. And tonight, even if you can't be at Mass, here is what God is doing right now in your life. The one who has named you, renames you. And the one who has claimed you, he reclaims you. And this is one of the thousand

things we're doing when we celebrate and commemorate this Mass. of the Lord's Supper, yes, we're thanking God for the priesthood, yes, we're thinking God for the Eucharist, yes, we're thinking God for deliverance and thinking God for him entering into his passion. On our behalf, he didn't have to do it. He chose to hand over his life in a sacrifice. Because why? Because he is the lamb of sacrifice. He is the lamb of God and he is the lamb. And we eat his flesh and we're marked by his blood. We're given freedom. We're given life. This is the place in your living rooms, wherever you're praying from.

When God once again, just like on Ash Wednesday, even more fully, just like on your baptism, that he stretches his hand out over you, and he says, here is your new name. Your new name is mine. You are mine. And in response, we say, God, that means my new name is I am yours. Tonight, let yourself be renamed. If you've walked away from him, tonight, let yourself be reclaimed. Your

true name he speaks to you, your mind. Your true name you speak back, and I'm yours.