This weekend we welcome the parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and all the relatives who have come for Iowa State’s family weekend. Thank you for coming to support your students who are just wrapping up a couple of intense weeks of testing in midterms. It seemed somehow fitting that the weather turned cold this past week. The students that, just a few short weeks ago, were walking around with a bounce in their step and a smile on their face have been walking around these last few weeks with eyes barely open and feet just sluggishly moving them in the direction of the next test or lab or presentation. Reality hit this week and it hit hard.
“On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples,
the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever.” This is the message our Lord gives to us in the first reading today, and it seems an especially poignant message as we gather together, not only because God has indeed called us to this spiritual banquet of the body of Christ, though indeed he has. But, God has done so something special in a special unique place. I mean, let’s be honest. When was the last time you were invited to a meal on a mountain?
The image of the mountain plays a unique role in this year’s gospel, the gospel of Matthew. It began when Jesus brought his followers to a mountain to hear the beatitudes. Later, he brought them up to the mount of transfiguration and, throughout this gospel, Jesus goes off to mountains to pray. The mountain in the gospel of Matthew is the place for a heavenly encounter with God. It is a sacramental experience of the highest kind wherein the divine and the human interact. God brings us to himself and transforms our hearts to be like his. It is on this mountain that we will feast with God.
If you are a student, you know the kind of preparation an event such as the one God has planned for us. In preparing for your family to visit you, you may have cleaned up your room, got homework done early, made reservations at a local restaurant, and done other such things so that your visit would be more pleasant. All of that work is in addition to all the tests, quizzes, projects, jobs, etc that you had to do for midterms. In some ways, the students whose parents couldn’t come may have had a better family weekend than those who could. However, you are all busy people. Wouldn’t it be great to have an opportunity to just sit back and relax?
That’s the best part about Christianity, though to be honest, we stole this from our Jewish brothers and sisters. We have a day built into our week where our entire goal is to take a break from our usual daily routine in order to focus on relationships. This is what Sunday is all about. Our culture doesn’t like to recognize the need for a Sabbath rest. Some Christians even think that Jesus took away our obligation to honor this sacred institution. Our beloved deceased Pope John Paul the second was aware of these developments and, so, he wrote an Apostolic letter called Dies Domini reminding the church of how important it is to honor the Lord’s Day. In this letter, John Paul wrote, “It is right, therefore, to claim, in the words of a fourth century author, that ‘the Lord's Day’ is ‘the lord of days’. Those who have received the grace of faith in the Risen Lord cannot fail to grasp the significance of this day of the week with the same deep emotion which led Saint Jerome to say: ‘Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, it is the day of Christians, it is our day’. For Christians, Sunday is ‘the fundamental feastday’, established not only to mark the succession of time but to reveal time's deeper meaning.”
So, our mountain is not necessarily a place, but a day and by saying that Sunday is the day that reveals time’s deeper meaning, our Holy Father was reminding us of the profound truth that, in our busy lives, we cannot lose sight of our relationships to the human family or to our God. When we do so, we lose a sense of the meaning of time and it becomes an arbitrary annoyance instead of being the gift that God has given to us in order to come to know him and love him through his Son and his church.
It is the hope of Fr. Ev and all the staff here at St. Thomas that you will come to see in this building, this church, the heart of this message. We hope that you will see in this place the message of the mountain that God calls you from the busy-ness of your life to the peace of his kingdom. He invites all to this banquet knowing that not all will respond. What prevents you from taking your Sabbath rest?
