Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
Teutonic Cemetery
Knights of Columbus
January 12, 2024
Holy Ground
We stand on holy ground because the soil is soaked by the blood of martyrs, including that of St. Peter, those who witnessed to Christ with their very lives during the persecution of the Emperor Nero.
This is the burial place of many others who never laid down their lives for Christ, but were, in their own way and time, witnesses to Christ, whether it was the subjects of Charlemagne who are buried here, or the Flemish, or those who have been interred here in later times. From age to age, the Lord’s goodness and love have been proclaimed in this place in which we now stand and where we now worship. How we should rejoice to be here. Let us say it again: “For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord!”
The One Who Is Our King
Yet how we doubt the goodness of the Lord. In the reading from First Book of Samuel, the people of Israel are demanding a king to rule over them. Samuel, wiser than the whole lot of them, warns of the consequences, yet the people are not receptive to his superior wisdom. In the end, the Lord gave in to their request.
Yet, as the martyrs knew and as we must learn day by day, there is only one King, namely, Christ the King. And if we hope to endure in steadfast love and to fulfill the reason why God created us, then we will give our allegiance, not to any earthly king, but to the One by whom and for whom all things who made, who holds everything together in being, and the King who has redeemed us at the price of his blood.
Beyond Paralysis
In the Gospel, we met a paralyzed man who was cured by Jesus. Jesus unlocked the secret of his healing by forgiving his sins. The cure of his physical paralysis was the sacramental sign of the spiritual cure of his inward paralysis due to sin.
If we would follow in the footsteps of those who are buried here – the ancient martyrs and those who kept the faith from age to age— then we must embrace the One of whom it was said, “We have never seen anything like this before!”
Let us ask for the prayers of the holy ones buried here including any who may still be undergoing the final purification of purgatory, that we would be healed inwardly, and thus unbound, set free, to journey day by day towards that Kingdom where Christ lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. Vivat Jesus!