On the night before he died at the Last Supper, as we hear recounted for us today from the
15th chapter of St. John's Gospel, our Lord raised the bar of the love of God and the worship of God
by commanding us to love one another as he has loved us. And in the context of that Last Supper,
that first holy sacrifice of the Mass,
our Lord revealed the depths of his love. He began his suffering and death in the context of
celebrating the first Eucharist. And he loved his apostles unto death.
And in a strangely ironic way, it was as he was offering this great sacrament of love
for his apostles.
And as he was giving this commandment to them that he was betrayed,
that it would ultimately lead to his death and of course also to his resurrection,
one of his chosen ones, one of those he had drawn to himself to be a special instrument of his mercy
and a special instrument of his salvation to the world.
Judas betrayed him.
And even Peter, who he had chosen to head his church, also turned away from his grace on that evening.
So, from the very beginning, we see how fragile the church is
and that in the providence of God,
even this fragility serves a purpose. It's ultimately lifted up as, you know, everything
takes its meaning and has its divine power
through the passion, death, and resurrection of the Lord.
Our Lord took death and turned it on its head.
And so scandals will come.
They have always come.
The greatest scandal of all is the fact
that one of our Lord's own chosen ones
was the one who betrayed him.
But all these things God has turned ultimately to good.
In the end, the church always wins.
In the end, Christ is always victorious,
even though our experience of these things isn't that way,
just as the apostles didn't experience our Lord's arrest
and his subsequent trial and murder to be a victory.
It was a scandal to them.
And they didn't deal with it all that well.
Strike the shepherd, our Lord said,
and the sheep will be scattered.
And it was true.
The problem was that these sheep that were scattered
were the ones that were supposed to lead the rest of the church.
And so there had to be a restoration.
And after our Lord's ascension into heaven,
Judas needed to be replaced by someone
who was a witness.
A witness to the power of God's grace and glory.
And that was Matthias.
And he remains a more or less forgotten apostle.
Not necessarily forgotten,
but probably least known among them.
We remember Judas.
We all know he was chosen from the beginning.
And, you know, it's the same old thing.
We remember,
we remember the evil people do more than the good that others do.
But in the end,
the apostolic character of the church
and the grace of God is always triumphant.
And that's really what we celebrate today
with the election of Matthias
to replace Judas.
That's our affirmation in our faith
in the indefectible.
And the other thing,
I think,
is that the church has to be a place
where there is a responsibility of the church
and the perseverance of the church.
The church will remain to the end of the world.
The gates of hell shall not prevail against her.
And Christ is ultimately victorious.
We just need to have the humility of St. Peter.
St. Peter, who under the influence of the Holy Spirit,
through the authority entrusted to him,
and with the Holy Spirit,
makes this election also using the elective process which he decided was the prudential
thing to do it was saint peter that initiated this process of bringing another into their midst
saint peter who also on the night our lord was betrayed uh had his own issues to deal with
and um he he and saint matthias both ended their lives well by giving them for christ
in an act of supreme love laying down their lives for jesus and for for the church so in
our own difficult times and in the midst of scandals we place our faith in jesus christ
and in his power realizing that these hardships and sufferings
are not just for us but for all of us and for all of us and for all of us and for all of us
and for all of us and for all of us and for all of us and for all of us and for all of us
and difficulties the church experiences now look forward to what
john paul ii has called a new springtime for the church we pray for that we
dedicate our lives to ushering in a new period of grace for the church
in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen
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and trees to be.