The Ressurrection of Our Lord 2017

The Resurrection of Our Lord

(Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9)

Today’s readings give, directly, the Good News of Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead, and, indirectly, a picture of the Church and her Scriptures that is both reassuring and admirable.

Let us look at the Gospel first which says much – relatively speaking – about the Apostles Peter and John, and about the appearance, the condition, of the tomb with its remaining contents, along with a passing mention of Mary Magdalen and the previously opened (by whom?) entrance to the tomb.  Of Jesus Himself, however, there is nothing at all apart from the statement that His Body was not to be found in the tomb.  In fact, all that we are told about what might have happened to Jesus is to be deduced from the closing passage:

They did not yet understand the Scripture that He had to rise from the dead.

Now none of that is very surprising to us who believe, because we know and appreciate that the Resurrection was a supernatural and transcendentally holy occurrence serving God’s glory and mankind’s salvation, not an intriguingly mysterious event staged for the titillation or satisfaction of human curiosity.  Let us therefore turn our attention to what we are told, directly, about the Apostles Peter and John (as we presume) and indirectly about holy Mother Church, her Scriptures, and her proclamation of Jesus.

On hearing from Mary Magdalen about the empty tomb Peter and the other disciple went to see for themselves:

They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not  go in.   When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,  and the cloth that had covered his head not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

The ‘other disciple’ (John) being younger than Peter was quicker to the tomb into which he glanced, but, out of respect for Peter, did not enter until Peter himself had arrived and gone first -- as head of the nascent Church – into the tomb of the Lord and Master Who had purposely chosen him for that role.  Only then did John himself enter the tomb.

That order of precedence is important because some – over-enthusiastic disciples of John, less holy than their master -- have tried to use the following words of the Gospel to the detriment of Peter and the exaltation of John:

Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

They have picked up on the fact that John is reported to have both ‘seen and believed’, whereas of Peter it is only said that ‘he saw’.  This enhancing of John at Peter’s expense is shown in other ways by those who say that John showed the greater courage at Jesus’ trial by going into the High Priest’s house while Peter remained, fearfully, outside; and, of course, John, alone of the Apostles, stood by Jesus’ cross on Calvary with Mary.   None of this special pleading, however, in any way detracts from Peter or disturbs the faithful who remember that John was still a young man who could lean on Jesus’ breast at the Supper, someone whom the Temple guards or Roman soldiers would not in any way have regarded as a possible threat (especially since John might well have had family connections with the Temple authorities), whereas Peter, a robust Galilean, was well known to have a sword which he had already, very shortly before, used in an attempt to defend Jesus.  As a result, the fully adult and manifestly strong, capable, and patently committed Peter was under far greater danger being at the trial and thereafter than John.

When Simon Peter arrived, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,  and the cloth that had covered his head not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.

Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, he saw and believed.

There, I believe, we have further evidence of the difference between Peter and John, between the humanly, fully mature, man, and the gentle youth John.  John ... the mystic among the Apostles and the future author of the supremely spiritual Gospel ... was ‘youthfully’ (not, however, wrongly) impressed by the atmosphere of the tomb and what he saw there.   The cloth that had been used -- out of respect for the deceased -- to prevent the bottom jaw from sagging, was carefully rolled up in it’s own place,  separate from the other cloths; and it is not outlandish to guess that a young person like John -- with mystic sensitivities and propensities -- might see and appreciate much in that separately-positioned cloth that could impress him and stir him to deeply ponder and further contemplate the ‘never-to-be-silenced’ aspect of Jesus’ Good News.  Peter, on the other hand, as head of the Church, and already graced for that supremely responsible role, carefully weighed up what he found in the tomb and what he did not find there.  He then went away and recalled what Jesus had said and done since he had known Him, and what the Jewish Scriptures had foretold about the coming Messiah.   Again and again he went over all these considerations together with what he had seen in the empty tomb, he prayed and prayed in order to appreciate how all these might fit together into one whole, absolutely essential, truth about Jesus.
 

Thanks to our second reading today we have the result of Peter’s thinking, for there he proclaims the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus, in the name of the Church and at the ‘command of God’:

(Cornelius said) All of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say. (Acts 10:33)

Peter then went on to give his summary of the Good News about Jesus in these few and precise words:

He went about doing good and healing those oppressed by the devil; they put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree; THIS MAN GOD RAISED ON THE THIRD DAY; God granted that He be visible to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with Him after HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD; He commissioned us to preach and testify that He is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead; to Him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him will receive forgiveness through His name.

There, People of God, you can see and appreciate the wonder of Jesus pictured and officially proclaimed for the first time by Mother Church through Peter: with the Resurrection of Jesus as the absolutely essential centre-piece, but also serving as the ‘sine-qua-non’ piece fitting into and binding together a wonderfully coherent mosaic of divine truth, embracing past, present, and future, and giving a most sublime expression to God’s goodness, love, wisdom, and mercy for sinful mankind throughout all ages.

John, the mystic, the contemplative, learnt and revealed beautiful and intimate truths of the relationship of sublime love between Jesus and His Father; truths in which one can immerse oneself: not to proudly investigate and criticise, not to directly try to imitate or grasp for oneself, but -- most humbly and gratefully -- to admire, delight in, and hopefully -- of God’s great goodness and gift – thereby to absorb something of the Spirit of Jesus.

For the whole picture, however, in all its majestic embrace of mankind’s needs and possibilities under the Providence of God’s infinite wisdom, goodness and truth, then look to Peter and the proclamation of Mother Church, passed down to us and interpreted today by Paul the most providential link between the wisdom of the Old and the revelation of the New Testaments, and our own God-given guide -- as Doctor of the Nations -- to the Church’s doctrinal fullness of truth, and the inspired and inspiring channel of her heavenly spirituality:

Brothers and sisters, if then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory.

                                              

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Maundy Thursday 2017

 Maundy Thursday

In Jewish circles this is a most holy and a most joyful night, a night of family feasting in grateful remembrance of God’s wondrous blessings; it is a family night because the Passover feast was, from the times of Moses, not a Temple feast celebrated according to minute details of public ritual, but a family gathering in the privacy of the home, a celebration with family and friends.

We are told in the Gospels that Jesus reclined at table with His disciples for what we call the Last Supper.  This was prescribed for faithful Jews; they would have ordinarily been seated, but for this special Passover meal they had to eat reclining, stretched out on their left side with head towards the food; it was a symbol of the liberty they were enjoying and celebrating, the liberty God had won for His Chosen People by the wonders He had worked in Egypt and their desert wanderings; wonders whereby He had delivered them from slavery and idolatry and brought them to their own land where they might freely learn to live and worship as God’s Chosen People.

This was the occasion to which Jesus had really been looking forward, for it would serve as a launching-pad, so to speak, for the ultimate freedom of God’s People -- freedom from sin -- that Jesus was about to win and commit to His Apostles’ care:

And He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15)

The Last Supper was no sad occasion for saying “Good-by”, nor should our memorial of it be overshadowed by thoughts of impending loss and grief.  How on earth could Our Lord have eagerly desired to eat such a sorrowful leave-taking meal with His disciples?  This was, on the contrary, something to be eagerly desired, something towards which His whole life’s endeavour had been leading, something that would express the fulfilment of His consuming zeal for His Father, His compassion for His People and for us.  It was to be a celebration based on the grateful remembrance of God’s historic goodness indeed, but much more, one looking forward to something memorable beyond measure, for they were now prefiguring and indeed actually setting in motion the ultimate fulfilment of the mission for which Jesus had been sent by His Father, for which Israel had been gradually prepared over many centuries, and for which the nations had been languishing long; a fulfilment the disciples had been chosen to serve with their lives, and one that would – drawing them through Calvary to the Resurrection and Gift of the Holy Spirit -- totally transform them into selflessly brave  and devoted Apostles of the Risen Lord, and wise servants and leaders of His Church on earth:

I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

This meal was, therefore, the final preparation for the salvation to be brought about, purchased indeed, by Jesus the Messiah: it was to be the seal of His now fully discovered life-purpose for which He had so humbly and patiently searched and scrutinized, communed with and prayed over, the Scriptures; yes, every single word, every ‘jot and title’ of them.  This meal was to be the most intimately human and life-fulfilling gift of Self to His disciples present and future; to be the ultimate and most sublime celebration with His disciples of His Father’s eternally enduring ‘good will towards men’ of all nations.  How truly is it said:

            Happy are those who are called to His Supper.

Humanity had long been in darkness, alienated from the true happiness of life.  Created, indeed, by God and for God, but deceived by Satan and enchained in sin, the human state stirred such compassion in the Father that He sent His only Son to share in and save the weakness of human flesh by living and dying as Son of Man sinless despite Satan’s power, cunning, and hatred.  Having thus broken the chains of sin He rose again as Son of God, and in the power of that Resurrection ready to pour out His healing and Holy Spirit upon all believers in His name, whom the Spirit who would then form into a likeness of their Lord and Saviour for the glory of the Father.

This was, therefore, no time for sad forebodings, but for ardent aspirations for what was to come: Jesus was indeed to suffer and to die but it would be for a divine purpose to be most surely achieved by His embracing the shameful cross on Calvary before entering upon the consummate glory of His Resurrection on the third day, (cf. Hebrews 12:2):

Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Although it might seem that Jesus’ life was being taken from Him by the superior power of death after having been betrayed by human treachery and condemned by human hatred, Jesus was not going to allow His disciples to suffer any such deceits of Satan.  At this Supper He now most deliberately offered His coming crucifixion and death to His Father, resolving to accept it and embrace it out of obedient love and in total commitment.  It would not be a result of the tragic betrayal that Judas’ action would seem to signify, because that imminent Passion and Death was now being lovingly embraced and yet more lovingly dedicated and offered by Jesus to wipe away the sins and betrayals of men and women (including Judas) of all times.  The whole tenor of tomorrow’s crucifixion was being pre-determined now, at this very meal, by Jesus.  He would die out of supreme zeal for His Father’s great glory, out of redeeming love for His People and compassion for sinful humanity the world over: all in accordance with and fulfilment of the wisdom, the beauty, and the sublime goodness, of divine Providence.

At the Passover Meal the Jews celebrated God’s wonders which saved the nation from physical slavery in Egypt; how much more should we, the new People of God, celebrate the wonder of God’s love for us manifested in the gift of His Son to us and for us?  How much more should we rejoice in the love which Jesus had and has for us; that love which led Him to endure the Cross and to scorn its shame so that He might enable us to have access to and, in Him attain to, our heavenly home:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

This night Jesus rejoices that soon He will be able to lead a host of disciples into the supreme joy of the heavenly banquet in the Kingdom of, and before the very presence of, His beloved Father whose will, purposes, whose Person, He had sought so humbly, so patiently, so whole-heartedly as Son of man on earth to serve and glorify.

Dear People of God, Holy Mass continues, so live it, love it, and above all:

Do this in memory of Me.                                                                                                                        

Palm Sunday Year A 2017

PALM SUNDAY (A)

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14 – 27:66)

In Matthew’s presentation of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ we heard some words that are not to be found in the other Gospel accounts:

Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.   Do you think that I cannot call upon My Father and He will at once send Me more than twelve legions of angels?   But then, how would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way?"

Those words show us that Jesus was indeed, deliberately living His life ‘according to the Scriptures’, as St. Paul puts it, no matter what the cost:

I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Jesus Himself confirmed this explicitly when, after His Resurrection, He appeared to two of His former followers on their way to Emmaus, and said to them:

“Oh, how foolish you are!   How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!   Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into His glory?"   Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures.   (Luke 24:25-27)

Final confirmation that the Scriptures are essential for the fullness of our understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection was most emphatically underlined when the Risen Lord appeared to the assembly of ‘the eleven and those with them’ in Jerusalem where, having first of all needed to convince them of the physical reality of His bodily appearance, He then sought to confirm their right understanding of Him in His resurrection by saying:

These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled." Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Lk. 24:44-45)

Now the God and Father Who sent Jesus had prepared Israel, for some 1500 years through inspired prophets and the Scriptures, to become His Chosen People: as it were, a fitting ‘seed-bed’ where His Son might strike root, and a people able to recognize, to appreciate, and to welcome Him when – become Son of Man -- He was publicly manifested as Israel and mankind’s Saviour and Redeemer.

Our modern age, dominated and dazzled by science and its achievements, wants to approach Jesus in an objective manner, seeking to critically examine and test whatever words or actions of His it might feel inclined to investigate, and then to formulate and pronounce thereon a merely rational judgment: a judgment invalidated not so much by its rationality – because reason, after all, is God’s great gift to human kind – but by its impersonal character, both on the part of the investigators who in no way seek personal communion with Jesus, and secondly, with regard to their attitude to Jesus Himself Whom they regard merely and exclusively as an object for scientific study and critical evaluation, not as One, whose divine Personality and human perfection remain unapproachably mysterious until they are acknowledged with humility and sought-after in prayer. 

The whole purpose of the Jewish Scriptures was, as I have said, to prepare for and lead to Israel’s promised Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour of mankind; and they continue to serve a like purpose today.   For us Christians, the Old Testament is still alive as a channel of God’s grace; it is replete with divine treasures -- no longer indeed to be found in its legal prescriptions -- but in its divine portrayal and foreshadowing of God ever-and-increasingly-active among men for their salvation, together with its moral discipline and spiritual teaching for the gradual development of believers seeking guidance in their relationship with God.   The Spirit of God -- given provisionally and proleptically to Israel -- is now given Personally in the name of Jesus and with supreme fullness to Mother Church, and through her to all the faithful by her proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel and her celebration and ministration of the sacraments of the glorified Jesus.

A meeting between God and man demands of us a willingness to open ourselves up to Him, and a preparedness to relinquish self in order to receive fully His gifts and graces. Jesus, objectively observed and interpreted according to the narrow limits of our imperfect rationality and individual sinfulness, can never even be conceived let alone embraced in the beauty of His human fullness and the wonder of His divine goodness.  The real, true, and saving Jesus can only be ardently desired in prayer, humbly sought-for with patience in the Scriptures and the Faith proclaimed by Mother Church, before being lovingly embraced in the Eucharist, by those who, under the guidance of the Spirit, are seeking New Life, that is forgiveness, redemption, and fulfilment in Jesus through the total gift of self to Him.

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed: "Let anyone who thirsts come to Me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  He said this in reference to the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive.    (John 7:37-39).

Dear People of God, consider closely what sort of meeting you are seeking to set up with Jesus this Easter.  If you desire it to be a personal encounter of giving and receiving involving both heart and mind, then pray that with Mary’s help you may learn to recognize Jesus in the swaddling clothes of the Scriptures -- foreshadowing and looking for Him in the Old, adoring and delighting in Him in the New – and that you may thus be enabled to offer your gift of self, humbly and fully, to Him in the Eucharist, and also to allow His return Gift of the Spirit so to possess and rule you as to become your deepest joy and peace, the abiding strength and hope of your life.