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Go to Galilee, and there you will see him.
One of the great gifts that we have as priests
is to journey with people on their life.
It is a great honor.
We see them in the most vulnerable and fragile moments,
and in some of the most wondrous celebrations.
Our baptism is a great family celebration.
Our First communion is great celebration,
sometimes even first reconciliation.
We have a great celebration for confirmation.
We are going to celebrate here tonight with these elect and candidates.
We journey with people on their wedding day
and their journey up to it.
But we also get to journey with people
when they are hurting and broken
through the sacrament of reconciliation, and
in particular,the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.
Of all these profound moments, I have to be honest with you,
the one moment that stands out,
where I have learned the most about my own humanity
and the humanity of everyone else is
the journey with the sick and dying.
It is profound.
It has changed me as a human being
and has humbled me to see how people handle
the toughest parts of their life.
I have learned so much from them on those journeys.
In these 24 years as a priest,
I have probably heard thousands of reconciliation.
I have anointed over a thousand people
and probably about a hundred or more of those have been dying.
I have been there for dozens of people’s last breaths.
I have learned more than a few things from them.
The most important thing that I have learned,
without a shadow of doubt in any sinew of my body,
is that eternity in eternal life is real.
The resurrection is real.
There is not even a sinew of my body that disagrees with it.
And part of my belief is
because I have been there for so many last breaths,
but also I have been there as they journeyed in life.
The clarity with which the pain and suffering brings is outstanding.
There is a clarity in those last moments of life
and yes, there are some regrets.
But there is forgiveness needed and forgiveness given.
There is super clarity in the gift of life
and now in the gift of eternal life.
For those who have been ever been honored
to be with somebody when they are dying,
it sounds so morbid, but it is a beautiful thing.
It is absolutely a beautiful thing.
I want to share with you two particular illustrations.
I could give you hundreds, but then we would be here for six hours
and I do not want to do that.
These have changed me.
There was a parishioner who called and asked me
to come and anoint his wife because she was dying
and she wanted to see me.
It was right in the middle of Sunday morning.
I said I would be there as soon as I could.
So I went right after 11:15am mass.
I went over and the husband pulled me aside and said,
“Can I talk to you first before we go?” I said, “Absolutely.”
He said “She is dying of cancer.
She went on a long journey
and we are now at the very end, at the very end.
I do not know how long she has,
but she wanted to see you before she died.
Now, you have to understand,
we have not been in the church for a long, long time.
But in these years of covid,
we have never missed a Sunday morning livestream.
We have watched you and she has fallen in love with the Lord again
that she had forgotten, and she wants to see you.
Will you anoint her?”
I immediately replied, “Well, of course I will anoint her.”
“Well,” he says, “There is one problem,
Father before you annoint, she is not Catholic.”
I said, “I can understand. Does she want to be?”
“Oh yeah!” He quickly responded.
“Then let's have her be Catholic and then I will anoint her.”
So I went in, I said to her,
“Would you like to be Catholic today?”
Her eyes lit up. She says, “Oh, can I?”
I said, “Yes you can.”
And I confirmed her in the faith.
And then I anointed her.
Later that day, she received her first communion.
I will tell you, the bright bream,
the brightness in the faith of that women,
she lit up like I had given her a million dollar lottery ticket.
She was so bright.
You would have never known she was in the last moments of her life.
It was a powerful moment of humility.
Then she leaned into me. She says,
“Father, thank you so much for this gift.
I have loved the Lord, and I love you
for bringing me back to the Lord.”
That is a gift of eternal life.
She says, “I now see him. I am ready to go to him.
I am at peace. You have given me peace.”
It was so powerful.
The second illustration I will give you is
one you have heard me talk about many times,
but I do not think this component of it.
My brother died, as many of you know, two plus years ago.
He died of pancreatic cancer.
It is an awful disease, very painful,
especially if you take a lot of chemo.
It just extends the pain and suffering.
And he asked me many questions along the journey.
He said, “I do not want to do this alone.”
I told him, “You will not do it alone.
We will be with you the whole way.”
He asks, “How will I know when the time comes?”
I said, “Oh, you will know, the Lord will come.”
I said, “All you have to do is be ready and surrender.”
He said, “Oh, I am ready. I am ready now.
This thing is awful. I just want to go home.”
So fast forward to the night before he died.
He knew he wanted to die at home,
but it was not practical at that point.
Things had become very complicated.
He was in the hospital and that was in the middle of Covid.
All his family were dismissed.
I was there alone with him.
He said, “Will you stay with me?
I do not want to do this alone.”
We held hands for about seven or eight hours.
Every now and then, he would wake up
and he would look over and he would squeeze my hand.
He would look down and say, “I am ready.”
I said, “I know you are ready.”
Eventually he woke up about one o'clock in the morning.
He squeezed my hand one more time.
He says, “You know, I am ready.”
And he had this big, bright smile on his face and he says,
“It is okay. Go home.
And if I die before you come back in the morning,
I will see you on the other side.
I am ready. And the Lord, I think he is coming.”
I said, “Are you sure I can not stay with you?”
He says, “No, they will be here in the morning,
but do not worry. I am good. I am good to go.”
And so the next morning he did die.
But we were with him as he died;
his wife and and his three kids and myself.
We were all there together and he was ready.
Eternal life is real and the resurrection for sure.
Those are just two of many instances I could give you.
I can completely know and understand
that the Lord takes us to eternity.
And that eternal life is for real.
That is what we are celebrating tonight.
That is the gift that we celebrate tonight,
that we have eternal life.
And tonight we get to live it. Now.
We do not have to wait until the last day.
We do not have to have any regrets.
We do not have to have any.
We surrender. But to what are we surrendering?
We are surrendering to the love of God.
And we want to live that joy.
What was important in every one of these lives
was gratitude and the gift of love in their lives.
That is what we celebrate, my friends, tonight.
We are going to welcome all these people into the church,
and we are gonna renew our own vows, but to what?
To continue to love the Lord our God,
and to be a witness to that love in the world.
Our role is to witness to that love in the world
so that others will come to know
and experience the joy of eternal life.
That is our role.
In the gospel tonight, we get a hint of
what the disciples found it hard to do it.
But what did he say to them?
He says, “Go to Galilee.”
To understand what “Go to Galilee” means.
Galilee was not just a physical location,
it was that, but it was much more.
It was where they first met Jesus,
where they first fell in love with Jesus.
Where they first came to follow Jesus.
What Jesus says is to go back to that moment.
Go back to the moment where you first believed.
Go back to where you first fell in love with someone.
Go back to where you first followed Christ.
And here is what Jesus promises.
He promises, “I will go with you. I will meet you along the way.
You do not have to worry about doing it on your own.
I am going to be with you.”
And he meets them along the way as they go back to Galilee.
We are all doing that tonight,
we are renewing our faith in Jesus.
We are all going back to our Galilee
so that we can live life fully.
Knowing that eternity is for real, my friends.
It is for real.
The resurrection is real and we have no fear of death.
So tonight we celebrate with great joy our own Galilee,
as we first get their first Galilee tonight.
And we celebrate, the Lord has risen.
Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Christ has risen from the death.
Go to Galilee, and there you will see him.
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