Father Ken’s Message
Good afternoon and welcome to the Catholic Cathedral of Sapporo. Today is the 3rd Sunday after Easter. Today is a very beautiful day for our English Mass Community. We will be welcoming two new little members into our family through Baptism. By coincidence I believe celebrating the Sacrament of Baptism within the Sacrament of the Mass (Holy Eucharist) captures the main point of Easter; our spiritual healing as human beings. All of us have gone to the doctor sometime in our lives, right. Sickness is one of the side-effects of our Original Sin; we are imperfect. I work in medicine when not working as a priest on the altar. As you all know there are various steps to cure: examination; making a diagnosis; choosing a course of treatment; cooperating with the treatment; follow-up care; and prognosis. These same steps were used by the great physician God to cure us of our spiritual Original Sin and possession of the devil. The cure was a spiritual cleansing by the water of Baptism, the oil of Confirmation, the nourishment of the Holy Eucharist, and life in the loving community of the Catholic Church. Thanks to the cooperation of Mary the Mother of Jesus and Jesus the Son of God we have been rescued from our spiritual disease of Original Sin and possession of the devil. Today we are also showing our love for two beautiful new brothers Ryan and Riley by using the cure Jesus brought to the world from Heaven to heal them from our inherited spiritual illness because we love them.
For me personally, the Gospel today seems very important. The Resurrected Jesus comes back to the friends he loved to show him that he is okay and survived death, which was the curse associated with Original Sin. Jesus proved his identity by way of his wounds. We in 2024 try to hide our wounds by plastic surgery and make overs or by hiding from others, but Jesus bragged about his wounds because they were the route to his Resurrection. God hated death and Original Sin, not us and Jesus figured out a way to save us captured by the sickness of the devil. For that reason, Jesus’ wounds are sacred. The Easter Candle in the front of the Church today praises the wounds of Jesus as the cure for our sin problem.
At my college teach all the Ethics courses like Medical Ethics, Nursing Ethics, etc. For us to be ethical we must concentrate on being moral human beings. The other animals created by God were imprinted with a plan for their existence by instinct. But we are more like God and have free will, so we must learn moral development by the choices we make in life guided by our parents, teachers, and priests. The simplest path of moral development promoted by a Harvard professor Carol Gilligan has three stages or steps: Step 1 is I love me; Step 2 is I love you; and Step 3 is I love you and me. Adam and Eve got stuck at “Step 1” loving only themselves but Mary and Jesus achieved “Step 3” by cooperating with God the Father’s cure for Original Sin through rejecting the devil’s temptations to go against the will of God. Mary accepted the challenge of being the Mother of Jesus out of love for all humanity not just for her self-protection. Likewise, Jesus accepted the Cross out of love for all humanity over safety for his own life. For this reason, our wounds are proof of our love for God. Wounds perhaps speak even louder than beautiful people do.
I am a fan of Pearl S. Buck who lived 100 years ago in Asia and wrote many books promoting love and understanding between peoples of the East and peoples of the West. She witnessed all the terrible wars in Asia and through her writings encouraged society to have empathy and love for the wounds in everyone’s bodies and souls. One of her famous quotes goes as follows: “We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, as much from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more.” My friends, dealing with life’s difficulties, disappointments, and injustices we come to understand and appreciate what the gift of life is all about. In today’s Gospel, the Risen Jesus challenges us his disciples to seek full spiritual health by examining our own wounds and through them to grow, transform and resurrect through the power of God’s love for us. My friends, let us be proud of who we are because God loves us more than he loves the problems, diseases and mistakes that wound us. Our wounds are a sign of God’s love for us. Amen.
Thank you very much.
What are the effects of Baptism?
1. Removes both original sin and personal sin, hence if one dies after Baptism he/she would go straight to Heaven.
2. Initiates the person into the Church. It marks him/her as God’s own, and allows the person to receive the other 6 Sacraments.
3. It makes the person an adopted child of God and puts gifts into his/her heart including sanctifying grace, supernatural gifts and Christian virtues.