Easter Sunday The Resurrection of Our Lord (A) 2014

The Resurrection of Our Lord (A)

(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 the witnesses chosen by God in advance who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.

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 them.  Sorrowing father and innocent, unknowing son, were journeying on together (Genesis 22:4–5) when:

On the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar.  Then he said to his servants: “Both of you stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over yonder. We will worship and then come back to you.”

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 third day when, on Mount Moriah, his son was not only given back unharmed to his father, but restored as the sign of God’s enduring promise of blessing for Abraham and for God’s Chosen People (Genesis 22:16-17):

I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from Me your beloved son,  I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies,

The ‘third day’ was thus, indeed, of momentous significance at the very beginning of God’s Chosen People; and also subsequently, when -- sinful and suffering – she was in dire need of renewal, the prophet Hosea proffered words of supreme consolation in the name of the Lord:

In their affliction, they shall look for Me: “Come, let us return to the LORD, for it is He who has rent, but He will heal us; He has struck us, but He will bind our wounds.  He will revive us after two days; on the third day He will raise us up, to live in His presence.  Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD; as certain as the dawn is His coming, and His judgment shines forth like the light of day! He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.”   (Hosea 6:1-3)

Those are but two of the most momentous occasions, two of the most significant texts from Israel’s scriptures, but the ‘third day’ was of such recognized and accepted significance throughout Israel’s history that we are even told of the Chief Priests and Pharisees, being gathered before Pilate in their concern for Body of Jesus crucified, and saying to him:

Sir, we remember that this impostor while still alive said, ‘After three days I will be raised up.’   Give orders, then, that the grave be secured until the third day, lest his disciples come and steal him and say to the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’ This last imposture would be worse than the first.”   (Matthew 27:63-64)

You can understand, therefore, what superabundant joy and gratitude the disciples experienced on recalling those ancient and prophetic 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 been restored to them on the ‘third day’, restored to life because death had not been able to hold Him!  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:

We are witnesses of all that He did both in the country of the Jews and (in) Jerusalem. They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree. This man God raised (on) the third day and granted that He be visible, not to all the people, but 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 to the people 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 of sins through His name.”

Now let us 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.

As you heard, Paul extends this wondrous event of Jesus’ rising from the dead to include us also.  But 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 on our behalf.  When He died on Good Friday the hopes of all mankind seemed to die with Him; and on Holy Saturday we could only experience 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 in the glory of the Father and the Holy Spirit, Paul says, you who believe in Him -- being called to that by the Father and empowered by the Spirit – are truly risen with Him and share in His new, risen Life, and as such you are no longer subject to the frustrations of your native pride and self-solicitude, no longer bound by sin to the finality of earthly death:

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

We can understand to a certain extent how the gift of faith in the risen Jesus raises us up with Him, but there seems to be something more ‘substantial’ about our ‘being seated with Him’ at the right hand of God, of which we are explicitly told in the letter to the Ephesians (2:4-6):

God, Who is rich in mercy, because of the great love He had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.

In what sense are we seated in the heavens (at the right hand of God) in Christ Jesus?

The answer is that we are not, of course, physically seated with Him now in heaven; nevertheless, that is where the vital powers of our spiritual life originate and whither they are leading us.  For Jesus is physically, in His glorious humanity, in heaven at the right hand of the Father; but He is also, in a sacramental manner, physically with us 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, in the power of His Spirit, the more He draws us closer and more intimately into Himself; for the Spirit, God’s Gift to us in the Eucharist, is ever at work forming us in Jesus’ likeness so that we might be able to share – as living members – in the eternal glory of His Body.

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

Such was the prayer of Jesus for us to His Father shortly before His death on the Cross, a prayer that overshadows us with the assurance of protection and for the hope of glory throughout the course of our lives:

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)

We who entertain such hopes and trust in such protection cannot surely, allow ourselves to live a life of overriding attentiveness to an endless search for personal success and worldly fulfilment, while largely forgetting our heavenly vocation and inheritance.  Even Jesus’ prayer can only be effective in the lives of those who are open to and in tune with His prayer, in the lives of those who seek communion with, and fulfilment in, Him more seriously and lovingly than they search for earthly appreciation and satisfaction.  And so we must never forget St. Paul’s admonition in today’s reading:

If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Think of (and aspire to) what is above not what is on earth.

But let us follow such advice in the spirit of today’s celebration, by taking to heart, first of all, the words of the prophet Nehemiah (8:10):

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; 

and then, recognizing with the Apostles of old and with Mother Church of today the surpassing wonder of Jesus’ Resurrection, let us appreciate that it offers us not merely a sufficient basis for joy on just one ‘day holy to the Lord’, but can, indeed, inspire and sustain a whole lifetime of grateful and enduring Christian joy dedicated to praising the goodness and beauty of God and serving the true well-being of our neighbour.

  

Good Friday 2014

Good Friday  2014

During the last world war our Western cultural upbringing was shown, at certain points, to be in stark contrast with that of Japan.  What shocked and alarmed us was the willingness and even the desire of many of the Japanese military to kill themselves in order to drive home their attack, and those who, in this way, deliberately destroyed themselves along with their target, were intensely proud to thus give their lives, it being, for them, a most honourable way to die.

Here we see something of the universal character of our faith: it is, after all, called the Catholic, which means universal, Christian faith.  For we should not, and indeed cannot, identify Christian values with those currently prevalent in our Western world, because our secularized Western culture is quite wrong, for example, in its fixation on satisfying to the full our human capacity for pleasure and endlessly stoking up our passion for pride.  Western society has come to regard death as the end of everything that is desirable, and consequently views death, with all its concomitant forms of suffering, as something to be avoided above all else whereas the former Japanese attitude was much closer to the true Christian appreciation of the significance of death.  On the other hand, the attitude of most Muslim fundamentalists today is more clearly motivated by hatred of others rather than by self-sacrifice for a most worthy cause, and as such is not only totally unworthy of a great religion but is an insult to human nature itself.  As Christians we can never resort to self-inflicted death, let alone to personally-administered destruction of others, as a direct means to express our zeal for the promotion of any earthly cause, because our life is God’s gift for our salvation and His glory, not an earthly weapon of choice in the struggle for power or pride.  Nevertheless, as Christians we are called to become so freed from the fear of death and to be inspired with such love for what is divinely beautiful and true, that we can wholeheartedly embrace death when it is to be encountered for witnessing to Christ and expressing our love for God, or for serving the urgent need of our neighbour.

Looking now, on this Good Friday, at the crucified Jesus, we recognize that, for Him, death was not the end but rather the climax of His life; it was not the loss of all that He had loved, but rather the sublime moment when He was at last able to give supreme expression to the love which had filled His whole life.  Jesus said, “It is finished”: that is, He was aware, and filled with joy, that He had completed the task His Father had given Him when sending Him into this world.  What was it that was finished?  Not simply the work of our redemption, because the full fruit of that has still to be gathered in over the ages by His disciples working in the power of His Spirit in the Church and in the world.  What then, at that very moment of His death on the Cross, was finally and fully finished?  It was Jesus’ constant desire to give Himself utterly and entirely to the Father in His earthly being; to express, as much as the limits of His human body would permit Him, the consuming love He had for His Father.

          I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is           accomplished!  (Luke 12:50)

How He had longed, how long He had longed, to be able to give total expression to the depth and the intensity of His love for His Father!  We can gather some impression of that longing when we recall that as a very young man, having been taken up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast, He had totally forgotten to set off back home to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph in the caravan, because of His absorption in His heavenly Father; and it was only:

After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. (Luke 2:46)

Such a Son had forgotten all about Mary, His mother, about Joseph, and the journey back home, because He was totally absorbed in discussions with the teachers in the Temple concerning His Father in heaven!  There He was only about 12 years old …. how great that blaze of love for His heavenly Father must have become by the time He was 30!!  And finally, the consuming intensity such love must have attained during the last two years of His life -- when He was occupied in His public ministry of expressing and trying to communicate His love for the Father to the Chosen People of Israel -- is, indeed, beyond our conceiving, for even Jesus Himself found human words inadequate for His needs, since the only way He could begin to describe it, was, as you heard,

How distressed I am until it is accomplished!

Now, however, on the Cross, that work has indeed been accomplished, that longing has been fulfilled: He has, at last, been able to give Himself entirely to His Father in total love and trust, to give Himself completely, not only with and in His human mind and heart, but also with and in His human body, given over, totally and completely on the Cross, for the Father’s glory!  Jesus had never tried to direct His own life, He had always tried to do His Father’s will and to follow His Father’s lead: even in the choice of one to serve as the foundation rock for His Church, Jesus had not chosen the disciple He especially loved, but the one His Father had marked out for Him:

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matthew 16:17-18)

To do His Father’s will had been the whole aim of Jesus’ life on earth, because, as Son before all time, His whole heavenly Being was a response of total glory, an expression of total love, for the Father.

That is how disciples of Jesus should regard their lives too.  We are not, indeed, divine as was Jesus, but nevertheless, we know that God has a purpose for us   to fulfil: we believe that we have, individually, a distinct role to play in the realization of God’s Kingdom.   We do not know what that ultimate purpose is, lest we should turn in on ourselves and be overcome by pride.  No; the disciple has, like Jesus, only one aim; and that is, under the guidance of the Spirit of Jesus, to fully live out the Father’s will, going wherever He indicates, doing whatever He wills.  The disciple of Jesus knows that life is not -- as with the animals -- just for living; life has been given us for a purpose which God has planned, a purpose which, if followed out to the end, will lead to a revelation of the ultimate significance and final glory of our being.

Jesus said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit’ and then He breathed His last.  Life did not just slip listlessly out of His grasp: He wholeheartedly gave over His life in total trust to His Father and then breathed His last.  This final and total gift of Himself to the Father was, in that way, the fullest expression He had ever been able to give of the love that filled Him.  For Christians, therefore, death should be supremely desirable in as much as it offers us the opportunity for the supreme expression of our love for the Father, our trust in Jesus, and our hope in the Spirit.

Elijah, the great prophet of Israel who, together with Moses, appeared to the disciples and was seen talking with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, had once uttered words not dissimilar to the words of Jesus (I Kings 19:4):

Elijah went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "It is enough, LORD," he said.

Elijah, however, was not the Lord; he was only a prophet of the Lord.  Elijah said those words looking back at himself and his work, and counting himself a failure:

          Take my life, Lord; I am no better than my ancestors.

On the Cross, however, Jesus was not looking either at Himself or at the result of His work: all that He had ever sought had been to do His Father’s will, and so, as He said, ‘It is finished’, He was not looking back but rather looking upward and forward to His Father.  He had, at last, been able to give the fullest possible expression to His love for the Father that His human body would allow Him.  As for His work, the Father would bring that to fruition Himself:

          Father, into Your hands I commend My Spirit

Dear Lord Jesus, may your Spirit form us in your likeness so that, with You and in You, we might, at the end of our days on earth, lay down our lives in peace as Your true disciples, having learnt to obey the command You gave us when You said:  

Love the (Father) with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:30-31)

                             

Maundy Thursday 2014

Maundy Thursday  April 2014                  

(Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1^st. Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15)

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The disciples, even though their time with Jesus was coming to its end, were still far from perfect in their following of Him and apparently -- according to St. Luke -- they had just been quarrelling about who was the greatest among them.  It would seem that, for the Supper, Judas Iscariot had taken the highest position to the left of Our Lord around the table while John who, as we know leant back on the breast of Jesus to ask Him a personal question, would have been reclining on Our Lord’s right.  Peter meanwhile, having taken to heart Jesus’ words chiding them for their lack of humility had, typically, responded whole-heartedly and taken the lowest place opposite John.  In that way Peter was able to speak directly to John telling him to ask Jesus whom He had in mind when He said that one of them was to betray Him.  This arrangement also explains how Judas could ask Jesus “Lord, not me surely” and Jesus could answer him affirmatively without any of the other disciples hearing His words. 

In the Gospel reading we heard how Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, exemplifying the humility He wanted to teach them.  He would seem to have begun with Peter seated in the lowest place.  Peter’s loving impetuosity, however, would not allow him to see Jesus thus humbled before him:

"No," said Peter, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me."

Why was this washing of the disciple’s feet so important?  Obviously, it was of symbolic importance: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” were Jesus’ stern words.  He then went on to explain:

A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.

“And you are clean” Jesus had said, but still the feet had to be washed, or else Peter could have no share with Him.

How had the disciples, apart from Judas Iscariot, been made clean?  We learn that from Jesus Himself when He went on to say to them (John 15:3):

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

Clean already in mind and heart by the receiving and believing the truth of Jesus.  That faith, however, had to be translated into works:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.  Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.  This is to My Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.  (John 15:1-8)

We can perhaps recognize a reference to Judas in the branch that is thrown away and then left to wither before being thrown into the fire.  On the other hand, those who remained true to Jesus, treasuring and believing the words He had spoken to them, would now have to let those words bring forth fruit in their lives.  That is why their feet had to be washed, even though they were clean in mind and heart.

We can think of the words of a modern hymn: “Walk with me, oh my Lord, through the darkest night and brightest day, be at my side o Lord, hold my hand and guide me on my way.”  There we describe the course of our lives, the way we respond to all of life’s circumstances, the aims we set for ourselves, as a walking with the Lord.  So it is with the disciples whose feet Jesus must wash if they are to have a share with Him in the Kingdom of God which is now beginning and will ultimately triumph.  What they have received from Him is meant to make them the light of the world and the salt of the earth; their light must shine because it has to enlighten the whole of God’s house:

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  (Matthew 5:14-16)

In this movingly memorable scene Jesus gives His disciples (that includes you and me!) strong teaching to match His strong words to Peter: teaching which not only tells us but also warns us that to have heart and mind washed clean in Christ is not enough if the feet are not daily consecrated by sincere endeavours to walk further along His way and in His service.  That is not all, however, for by so humbly and lovingly washing their feet Jesus indelibly prints on their minds the manner in which they must serve Him: wherever they walk and in all that they do they must seek always to give humble service to each other and to their neighbour.  Such an attitude will first of all establish unity among the disciples, above all among these future apostles.  No more arguing about who might be the greatest, they must all be willing to humbly serve each other; and then serve with each other the greater good of the flock of Jesus which He has chosen them to lead (Ephesians 4:3):

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Never again would these chosen ones who had seen their Lord and Master humble Himself by washing their feet allow personal pride to detract from their apostolic witness to Jesus; on this St. Paul most insistent in his teaching for the churches he established:

There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called -- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all.

We are all called, People of God, to be apostles of Christ, each in our degree.  The teaching and the example so lovingly given by the Lord are for all of us.  Let us, therefore, aspire more and more to walk along the paths of the Lord in the power of His Spirit: let us not try to kid ourselves into thinking that nice thoughts about Jesus and the Church are enough.  We have to bring forth fruit for the Father’s glory by seriously trying to serve Jesus by doing His work with His attitude: finding strength from our unity in the faith of Mother Church and cherishing the joy of true charity in our parish and personal life.