Fr. Gregory Waldrop, S.J. | STM Homily May 3, 2026

When people lament to me, often in the self-accusatory context of confession, that they are not paying enough attention to their religious practice, or they're feeling distant from their faith. One thing I asked them about is time. Right now, for example, it's early May, it's exam period. The academic year is coming to a close. Summer vacation is upon us. Many of you are looking ahead to graduation and next steps. What else is real about this moment? What else tells the time for you? I won't ask for a show of hands, but how many are still feeling an Easter glow? You know we've actually got several more weeks of Easter to come. Do you register that? Is it a part of your consciousness?

One way to stay in sync with our Catholic faith is to keep track of liturgical time, to use a liturgical calendar, which will not only tell you the date, but also remind you of the church's seasons and feasts. It's not necessarily about doing anything, it's just about knowing and then maybe reflecting for a moment. So just add it to your desktop or on your phone. It's an easy and meaningful way to stay, not only on time, but in time.

I remember once taking a stroll with a friend in one of New Orleans historic cemeteries. As one does there. Occasionally amidst the giant oak trees and Spanish moss. The magnolias and climbing ivy and the whitewash, sometimes crumbling, raised tombs of New Orleans bygone denizens. We encountered a gentleman there, if not homeless. He certainly looked down on his luck, and we exchanged a polite greeting as we passed. We wished him a happy Easter because it was, if I remember correctly, Holy Saturday and Easter was just a day away. He thanked us and said, oh, I forgot all about Easter. That's not so strange, I guess. But it struck me and my friend, another Jesuit, that it would be impossible for us to forget that it was Easter, if not out of devotion, then at least because of all the activity and the forethought that goes into Holy Week and all the Easter celebrations.

So again, how many of you are still feeling an Easter glow? I wouldn't fault you if you aren't, because the world keeps spinning and human beings keep spinning. Wars and violence. Injustice and misery. Our own personal trials and sorrows. Death in many forms all around us. According to our first reading from the acts of the apostles, Gentile widows got cheated in the community's daily distribution to the poor way back in the beginning. We like to imagine those earliest Christians, as you know, continually radiating and living out of Easter joy. But apparently it wasn't the case. How do we dare say to defrauded widows and orphans today. To the starving and war weary. Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Of course, the triumph of the risen Christ does guarantee our joy, ultimately. But we still have reason to weep. And conventional wisdom today tells us to forget about Easter and things like peace and compassion. Don't pray. Fight. Forget your neighbor. Love yourself and those closest to you. Yet on the eve of calamity, Jesus argued against conventional wisdom. That's got to be our main challenge today. When we look around at what we've built and it's still not heaven on earth to see through it all with eyes of faith. To live consciously in faith.

Time, jealousies and divisions were apparently already manifest in the early Jerusalem community. Hellenist versus Hebrew. And we know that even worse things lay ahead for them. Ejection from the synagogue. Roman destruction of the holy city itself, which for many really did seem like the end of the world. Can there be any doubt then, that the Holy Spirit was moving amidst it all? If, as it says, the number of disciples continued to grow, they kept coming. And that's still true today. Notably in this community, which at the Easter Vigil welcomed thirty six people into full and more integrated communion.

If this were, I don't know, the Kiwanis Club, Many of us might have checked out long ago, but divisions and scandals and contradictions can't overwhelm a nagging conviction conviction buoyed by hope that in spite of all the signs to the contrary, all the death, what Jesus promised is true, real, and meaningful. The basis for that fuller life he came to bring to us. Don't let your hearts be troubled, he said. The risen Christ is nothing if not a consoler, an encourager, a bringer of peace to troubled hearts and minds.

But if you don't believe my words, he added, knowing that many would not then believe on account of my works. Now, as then, people naturally want results and get impatient with mere words. Jesus's words and works were all of a piece. His way to the father. What he said, what he did, how he lived, and how he chose to die. The early Christian community was called The Way, and we see a hint of their self-understanding in the organized food distribution to the widows. Even if it became something for them to fight over, this unworldly commitment to the poor and to the sharing of their resources reflects something essential in the early church's embrace of Jesus as the way.

We should see our own self-understanding and something like Saint Thomas More Soup Kitchen. Which wrapped up another incredible year on Wednesday by serving more than five hundred and fifty meals to the needy among us, not all of them by any means Catholic. Early Christians quickly became known also for staying behind to care for all the sick in times of plague. When pagans abandoned even loved ones and fled. Maybe that's why the early church grew so rapidly. Words and works that led the first Christians to experience God as real and in their midst.

People of all kinds were attracted to those communities, despite the fact that their founder had been executed as a criminal. Despite the fact they obviously didn't get along in perfect harmony among themselves, despite the emphasis on sharing and sacrifice. In our second reading, Saint Peter offers an especially positive interpretation of this, likening us to living stones stacked one atop the other on the firm foundation provided by Christ, our cornerstone. We are then, Saint Peter says, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people called out of darkness into a wonderful new light.

Even if we don't always feel the warmth of the light, Christ's farewell words to those he loved are meant for us too, who believe and persevere along his way. They encourage and remind us that however unlikely it may seem, sometimes we are God's holy people, living right now in God's holy presence and in God's holy time.