Easter Sunday 2018

Easter Sunday 2018

           

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

  

 

     God raised (Jesus) on the third day and granted that He be visible to us.

Those words of St. Peter are the culmination of an age-long awareness and expectation in Israel, where the third day was of special significance for Jewish piety.  In the book of Genesis we are told that Abraham, in obedience to the voice of God, was taking his only son Isaac to offer him in sacrifice to the Lord on the mount which the Lord would show him.  Sorrowing father and innocent, unknowing son, were journeying on, together with some servants, when:

On the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you."   (Genesis 22:4-5)

On the third day Abraham had observed Mount Moriah where he believed his son had to be sacrificed to the Lord; in the event, however, it turned out to be the mount where the son was not only restored unharmed to his father, but restored as the sign of God’s enduring promise of blessing for Abraham and God’s chosen people (Gen. 22:16-17):

Because you have not withheld your only son – blessing I will bless you and multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.

Again, in the prophecy of Hosea (6:1-3) there is consolation for sinful, suffering, Israel:

Come, and let us return to the LORD; for He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up.   After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight.   Let us know, let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD.  His going forth is established as the morning; He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth.

You can understand, therefore, what Easter comfort and joy the disciples experienced on recalling such texts after having found the empty tomb and seen the Risen Lord!  The ultimate bearer of God’s promise, Jesus Whom they had known and loved, had risen on the third day: death could not hold Him!  Satan had been defeated, and his power over mankind forever broken and shattered!!  That is why Peter could so confidently proclaim to Cornelius and his family whom, under the command of the Holy Spirit, he was about to baptise (Acts 10:39-42):

We are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, Whom they killed by hanging on a tree.  Him God raised up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.  And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that it is He Who was ordained by God to be Judge of the living and the dead.

Let us now turn to our reading from St. Paul and allow him to guide our thoughts:

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.
  

Paul thus extends this wondrous event of Jesus’ rising from the dead to include us:

You have died (with Christ), and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 

How can he say that we died with Christ?  Because Christ died as Lord and Saviour of all mankind; though sinless, He died a sinner’s death for our sake and on our behalf.  Moreover, when He had died to sin, what chance was there that anyone else could ever overcome the power and the horror of death which is the sting in the tail of sin?  When He died on Good Friday all our hopes seemed to die with Him; and on Holy Saturday His disciples experienced only the hopelessness, helplessness, and indeed the emptiness of our native, sinful, condition.

But now, Peter and Paul, together with all the apostles, bear witness that God has raised Jesus from the dead; and, since He is risen, Paul says, you -- you who believe in Him and in the God Who raised Him -- you too are risen with Him since you have the opportunity of sharing in His new, risen, Life: because of your faith in Him you are no longer subject to the frustrations and ultimate horror of earthly death, no longer bound by sin in your native pride and self-solicitude:

“O Death, where is your sting?  O Hades, where is your victory?"  The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law.  But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-58)

But Paul also said that we too are seated with Christ at the right hand of God.  Now, we firmly believe that Jesus, the Holy One of God, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and we also believe that He continually intercedes for us; but how are we seated with Him at the right hand of the Father?

The answer is that we are not, of course, physically seated with Him now in heaven; nevertheless, heaven is where the vital powers of our spiritual life originate and whither they are leading us.  Jesus is physically, in His glorious humanity -- our humanity received without sin from Mary and now glorified as Jesus’ Personal humanity in heaven -- at the right hand of the Father.  Moreover, He is also physically with us -- in a sacramental manner -- in the Eucharist, whereby He draws us up, into Himself through the Spirit.  Our heavenly food -- the driving force of supernatural life within us -- is the living Body of the One seated at the right hand of the Father in glory; and the more we live by that food, the more we live by His Gifted Spirit, the more He draws us closer and more intimately into Himself.  For the sake of all mankind He has taken our humanity into glory: none are barred from sharing His glory by reason of their humanity.

However, we have yet surer basis for hope than the mere fact that our human nature is no longer barred from heaven: for each of us has been called, drawn to Jesus -- personally and individually -- by the Father Himself, as Jesus most explicitly said:

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  (John 6:44)

And so, having obediently answered the Father’s call, we have allowed ourselves to be drawn by the Father to Jesus, and we have come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God made man; and, having been baptised into Him as our Lord and Saviour, we have now been endowed with, and justified by, His Gift of the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul tells us:

Moreover, whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.  What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  (Rom. 8:30-31)

Today Jesus is risen and we are potentially, no more than that, we who have faith in Him are already initially glorified in Him: for we who receive the Body and Blood of the Risen Lord in true faith are now assured that we are being actually guided by the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God, towards heaven – as both our destiny and our home -- because our food of life, the Eucharist is, sacramentally, the very same Body which is Jesus’ in heaven; and thus God’s Gift of the Holy Spirit, bestowed on us through the Eucharist, is now at work forming us ever more in Jesus’ likeness, so that we -- as living members, in Spirit and Truth, of His Mystical Body on earth -- might ultimately be able to share in the eternal glory which is His, in the Spirit, before His Father in heaven. 

For your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with Him in glory.

The Father has received His Beloved Son back and, living in the Father’s heavenly presence, His Son is the bearer of an eternal promise, that where He is, we -- who through faith and baptism are members of His mystical Body -- may be:

Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)

Such is, indeed, the Lord Jesus’ prayer today in our regard; and what hope of glory and fulfilment it holds out for us in the future, what joy and peace it can bring us now, if we pray in unison with Jesus, and live in a way that makes such a prayer credibly ours!  Consequently, we who entertain such hopes surely cannot allow ourselves to live a life of worldly obsession, constantly searching and striving for what the world promises, whilst largely forgetting our heavenly vocation and future.  Even Jesus’ prayer that we ‘may be with Him where He is’ can only bear effect in the lives of those who are open to, and in tune with, such a prayer; that is, in the lives of those who seek communication and communion with Him more seriously and lovingly than they search for earthly success, earthly rewards, human sympathy and human companionship.  And so, let us never forget St. Paul’s admonition in today’s readings:

If 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.

Let us, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, follow such advice in the spirit of today’s wonderful celebration, taking very much to heart the words of the prophet Nehemiah:

Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10)

Maundy Thursday 2018

Maundy Thursday 

This is a most holy and a most joyful night: it is a night of family feasting in grateful remembrance of God’s wondrous blessings.  It is indeed a family night because the Passover feast was, from the times of Moses, not a temple feast celebrated according to minute details of ritual, but a family gathering in the privacy of the home, a celebration with family and friends.

On returning home for this celebration, and after prayer, the head of the family gathering had to consider himself a prince: decorating his table with the best food and the most acceptable wines.  In fact, it was his duty to prepare sumptuously according to the measure of his possibilities.   We are told in the Gospels that Jesus reclined at table with His disciples for the Last Supper as we call it today.  This was prescribed for faithful Jews; they would have been seated for an ordinary meal, 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 celebrating, the liberty God had won for His Chosen People by the wonders He had worked in Egypt and throughout their desert wanderings, delivering them from slavery and bringing them to the freedom they now enjoyed.  They had much to be grateful for, and this was the night on which they gave whole-hearted expression to that gratitude, in accordance with the Lord’s command.  Each generation of faithful Israelites was taught to consider that they themselves had been brought out of Egypt, saved from slavery, by the Lord; they were not celebrating something that happened in the past to their fathers only; no, they had to realize that they themselves were among those that had been saved by the Lord.  The sages, the wise men, of Israel, when speaking of this night’s celebration, tell us that when it is celebrated with such dispositions, the God of Israel, the Holy One Himself, leaves His normal, familiar, entourage of angels and of the righteous in the Garden of Eden, and comes this night, to watch with delight the children of Israel here on earth rejoicing in the deliverance He won for them, gratefully singing His praises and loyally observing His commandments.

This was an occasion to which Jesus had really been looking forward:

I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15)

We must be quite clear about this: the Last Supper was no sad occasion for saying “Good-by”.  How on earth could Our Lord have “eagerly desired” to eat 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 work had been leading, something that would express the fulfilment of all His efforts and desires for His disciples and for us.  This was no sorrowful leave-taking anticipating the end of a lovely earthly relationship, it was the preparation for a new and heavenly future for believers in Jesus, and our memorial of it should be a festal gathering:

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

Why so eagerly?  Because this meal was the symbol of, the ultimate preparation for, and above all, the decisive inauguration of that heavenly banquet celebrating and conferring the salvation brought by Jesus: freedom from sin, and membership -- as adopted children in Christ -- into the family of God, where all can call Him “Father” and have a share in His eternal blessedness, according to the words,

Blessed are those who are called to His Supper.

That was the blessing the Son had come to bring to a humanity which had long been in darkness, had long been alienated from true happiness and life: a humanity created by God and for God, but deceived by Satan and enchained by sin; a humanity which stirred such compassion in the Father that He sent His only Son to share in and to save the weakness of human flesh by dying sinless and rising again; and in the power of His Resurrection pouring out His Holy Spirit upon those who would believe in His name, the Spirit who would form those disciples in the likeness of their Lord for the glory of the Father.

It was now so near to fulfilment; this was no time for sad reminiscences of the past but for ardent longings for what was to come: Jesus was indeed to suffer and to die but that was for a purpose which would be surely achieved through His suffering and death.

Let us now just look at that suffering and death, which was so close at hand but which, Jesus refused to allow to deter Him:

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. (Hebrews 12:2)

It might have seemed that Jesus’ life was to be taken from Him by the superior power of death after having been betrayed by those to whom He had been sent and condemned by official fear and hatred.  Had that been the case, then indeed, Jesus’ death would have been the supreme tragedy and the Last Supper an occasion for agonizing farewells and deep-felt loss.  That was not what Jesus wanted and was not what Jesus was going to allow.  This meal and the morrow's crucifixion were to be occasions of deepest fulfilment, joy and love, because at this Supper Jesus deliberately offered His coming crucifixion and death to His Father, resolving to accept it and embrace it out of obedient love for His Father.  It would not be the power of sin and death which would take away His life from Him, but rather -- just as now He was offering it, to His Father -- so tomorrow He would be giving it in obedience to His Father’s will and purpose for His only-begotten Son made flesh for us.  His suffering and death would not be the tragic betrayal that Judas’ action would seem to signify; because that Passion and Death was being dedicated and offered by Jesus now to wipe away the sins and betrayals of men and women of all times.  The whole tenor of tomorrow’s crucifixion was being pre-determined now, at this meal, by Jesus.  He would die out of obedient and loving zeal for His Father, out of redeeming love for the whole human race.

At the Passover Meal the Jews celebrated God’s wonders in Egypt which saved the nation from physical slavery; 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, in Him, to our heavenly home:

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.

Tonight, Jesus rejoices that by dying He is going to destroy death and turn betrayal into faithful love; He rejoices that soon He will meet up, once again, with His disciples in the great joy of a heavenly banquet shared among friends; friends to whom, in the meantime, He is going to leave this pledge and this food along with the loving request: Do this in memory of Me.

Palm Sunday Year B 2018

Palm Sunday (B) 2018

(The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark)

In the responsorial psalm today you repeated words that were horrendous, coming, as they once did, from the mouth of Jesus:

My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

Such a cry can only have been forced out of Jesus by unimaginably intense suffering, for He was, on earth, the very Son of God made flesh: as a Child He had been loved and taught by Mary, protected by Joseph; He grew up in constant favour with God and man; and  His great delight was to learn from the Scriptures to recognize with His human mind and  respond with His human heart to His heavenly Father more and more, day by day; He had been sent and endowed to save Israel and, indeed, the whole of mankind; and in all that He did He sought only to please and give glory to His Father in Heaven.  How intense, therefore, must those sufferings have been which led Him to cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?  Listen to the psalm again (22:7-8):

All who see Me mock at Me; they mock Me with parted lips, they wag their heads: “He relied on the Lord; let Him deliver Him, let Him rescue Him, if He loves Him.”  

It is hard to suffer unjust, ignorant, derision; derision from those of no principles whose life-course bends with every prevailing wind, and whose only courage is to run with the hounds and share in the pleasures of the mob.

But even those who find themselves having to endure such derision -- when they have been finally brought low, and their suffering and agony is visible to all -- will hear, at times, individual voices being raised on their behalf, or perhaps find themselves being accorded some compassionate and sympathetic gestures from one or two onlookers more humane or tender-hearted than the others.  There were, indeed, some such who witnessed Jesus’ agony; but they were only tender-hearted, they had no understanding of Jesus’ P/person and character, no appreciation of His aims and purpose.  And they only lamented, since no one actually spoke up for Jesus personally, with the result that His persecutors were able to laugh at His loneliness.  Even worse, in their laughter they mocked at His very thread of life saying:

          He relied on the Lord, let Him rescue Him, if He loves Him!

Yes, Jesus had trusted in the Lord, His Father!  Throughout His life He had trusted totally in His Father and He knew that His Father was totally trustworthy.  Now, however, it seemed that, as His life was draining away, He was leaving a situation totally at variance with the ideal for which He had lived.  Jesus had wanted to lead His fellow Jews to recognise the Father He proclaimed as the one true God Whom they and their fathers had always worshiped: the one God and Father Whose wisdom and goodness could only be most fittingly learnt and most fully appreciated from the witness and teaching of His only-begotten Son now become man.  And here were those to whom He had been sent, and for whom He had laboured long and suffered much, mocking His Father and their God with their jibe: “let Him save this fellow if this fellow is His friend”.

Compared to this Personal agony the physical torment was as nothing; nevertheless, physical torment it was: He could count every one of His bones and was wracked by agonizing cramps as He hung there; breathing was so horribly difficult for Him, continually having to struggle to raise up His rib cage enough to experience but the slightest relief from the dreadful and continuous threat of being smothered; and then those holes in His hands and feet were pouring out His life-blood and leaving Him with such a terrible thirst!

The psalm which Jesus was reciting went on:

But You, O Lord, be not far from Me; O My help, hasten to aid Me;

witnessing to the fact that He trusted His Father to the end; indeed, the psalm closes with words of triumph:

I will proclaim Your name to My brethren; In the midst of the assembly I will praise You.  You who fear the LORD, praise Him!  All you descendants of Jacob, give glory to Him, revere Him, all you descendants of Israel!

However, granting such a final outcome, the question becomes all the more pressing: why did Jesus have to suffer so dreadfully in order to complete the work of our salvation?

It was not only to save us from our sins, His holiness and majesty were infinitely more than sufficient for that; but to restore and renew us individually so that each of us might be able to recognize and respond to the love of His Father, from Whose  loving approval we had all originally turned at the behest of the serpent … all that required and still requires our individual humble and loving co-operation!

And so, Jesus did not suffer horribly simply because it needed such suffering to free all of us from the weight of our sins; no, He suffered so much to show and hopefully convince us, His brethren, to just what extent He Himself would, and we, each and every one of us, could and should, trust the Father.  He willingly emptied Himself entirely of any Personal dignity, physical and emotional reserves of strength, of any hope of possible escape or deliverance other than His Father’s love and faithfulness which, however, He could no longer feel or imagine.   He suffered thus because He wanted to proclaim to suffering humankind that no matter what their situation – for no human suffering could possibly measure up to this – the Father was the One to trust.  He might have said this again in words, but words could in no way give the weight of conviction offered by the living example of this Man who, so totally forgetful of Himself, was relinquishing all that He had and was, and committing Himself into His Father’s loving arms while agonizing on the Cross, in order to make manifest to sinful men just how good, how totally admirable and absolutely trustworthy, the Father is.  Only by thus enduring and triumphing over the worst the devil might inflict would Jesus be able free us from fear of the devil by giving us an unquenchable hope in the Father’s goodness, and thereby empower us to follow wherever His Spirit might lead us for God’s glory and the salvation of the world. 
 

Hear now the words of St. Peter giving encouragement to a tiny flock of bewildered and persecuted Christians in Asia Minor, and recognize how your faith today, dear People of God, is indeed being offered the same nourishment as that which enabled those Christians of old to triumph over their sufferings and transform their world:

You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.   He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (1 Peter 1:18-21)

Glory and praise to you Lord Jesus Christ!  You are the Saviour of the world!