Readings: Hebrews 7:25—8:6 / Mark 3:7-12
Every morning, to get to St. Joseph’s, I have to drive across the bridge that goes from West Salem to downtown Salem onto Center Street.
Any of you ever have to drive across that bridge? Your parents bring you that way?
I was thinking this morning that that’s the only way to get from West Salem over to here.
If they didn't have that bridge, it would take probably three hours to get here.
You'd have to go all the way down to Corvallis and come all the way back.
It's interesting for us to think about bridges, because our Lord Jesus Christ is kind of like a bridge between us and God the Father.
That's what it means when you hear in the Scriptures that He is the mediator.
“Mediator” just means “somebody who goes between,” like someone who goes between me and somebody else.
If I wanted to go talk to a king, for example, or talk to the emperor in the ancient world, I probably couldn't get in there to see him, because I'm nobody.
I would need to have a mediator, somebody who already knows the king, who could go in between us, go in front of the king, and say, “This guy needs something,” right?
Then we can begin to get into a relationship.
Well, it's the same thing for us with God the Father.
In the beginning, God created the human race.
He loved us.
Adam and Eve were in a relationship with Him, but they committed the original sin.
They left the garden.
They left the relationship.
Over centuries and centuries, there was this big gap that was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Finally, it got to the point that—God could always speak to us—but we couldn't speak to Him.
We couldn’t get to Him.
We needed a mediator who could come and, like a bridge, close that gap so we could easily be in a relationship again with our Father.
That's kind of the job description of a priest, by the way.
A priest is a mediator between God and the people.
So, what's the priest doing here when you see him at Mass saying all these prayers?
Well, he's praying on behalf of all of you.
You'll hear that in the Eucharistic prayer in a little while.
You’ll hear me say those words: “On behalf of all those who are gathered here, we offer you this sacrifice, or they offer it for themselves and those who are dear to them, for the redemption of their souls…”
The priest is standing here on behalf of all of you, all your family, everybody you love, and the whole Church, offering this sacrifice that goes up to the Father.
Then what comes back from the Father is mercy, forgiveness, love, God’s blessing, and God’s grace.
That comes through the priest, as the mediator, to all the people.
But the priest is just a person like everybody else.
I’m able to do this, not because I have some special powers, but because Jesus has called me to do it.
He is the true priest.
He’ss the great high priest.
He is the one, really, mediator between us and God.
He’s the one who makes the bridge.
He opens the way.
That’s why everybody in the Gospel was so anxious to get close to Him.
He was like the super rock star influencer.
Thousands of people followed Him everywhere He went.
He was so popular and famous that He had to preach from a boat out in the ocean because if He were on the land, the people would get too close and crush Him!
That’s how incredibly famous He was.
Everybody was coming to Him because they knew, if they got close to Jesus, they got close to God.
If they got close to Him, they could get close to the Father.
All of us, too, are called to become like bridges.
I want you to remember this today.
Just like Jesus is the bridge between us and the Father, or the priest is the bridge between the Church and God, you also are meant to become like a bridge between other people and the Lord.
You can bring them to Jesus.
You don't want to be like an obstacle.
You don't want to be like a roadblock.
You want to be like a nice, open, wide bridge, where people, when they meet you, will know, “I'm not just getting close to this person; I'm getting closer to God.”
People should feel something of God's love, forgiveness, and mercy when they're around you.
St. Marianne Cope, who we're celebrating today, was like that.
She was a great nun, an American, out on the East Coast.
The Bishop of Hawaii sent out a letter to all the bishops saying, “We need nuns to come to Hawaii.”
Who wouldn't want to go to Hawaii, right?
Well, nobody wanted to go to Hawaii back then because it was so remote.
It took forever to get there.
You couldn't fly.
It took forever to get back.
And when you got there, they had a big problem with leprosy.
Many people had this disease, and Hawaii was quarantining them all on one island so it wouldn’t spread.
That’s why the bishop needed nuns to come.
He thought, “I need somebody to take care of these lepers on the island of Molokai.”
Nobody wanted to go there.
They'd pull a ship up just close enough to throw supplies.
Nobody would actually land on the island.
The lepers were so isolated and lonely.
Well, St. Marianne Cope, this great nun, said, “I will go.”
She went there and spent over 20 or 30 years, the rest of her life, living with the lepers, praying with them, teaching them about God, and loving them.
What do you think she became?
She became a bridge.
She became a bridge from that remote island of Molokai all the way to Heaven.
She brought all those lepers with her into the kingdom of our God.
That’s what we're called to do here in Salem.
Let’s be bridges today: bridges between the people we meet in the world and the kingdom of Heaven, always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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