Second Sunday of Eastertide year C 2016

2^nd. Sunday Eastertide (C),

Acts 5:12-16; Revelation 1:9-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31)

The visceral attraction of Catholic faith and worship which we acknowledge as the mysterious power of divine holiness was quite perceptible when the early Church gathered together for prayer and celebration.  In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we were told that, although the first Christians used to meet openly in the Temple at Jerusalem along with thousands of other fellow Jews gathering for the Passover celebrations, and despite the fact that ‘many signs and wonders were done among the people at the hands of the apostles’, nevertheless:

None of the others dared to join them, but the people esteemed them. 

This reluctance of many to ‘be seen with’ the Christian company was mainly, no doubt, due to the fact that, as St. John (9:22) tells us:

The Jews had agreed already that if anyone acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue;

and we, of course, understand such fears easily enough today when many tremble before the censures of mere political correctness. 

Nevertheless, that most mysterious power of holiness would not allow certain others to remain as distant onlookers, for we are told in the next verse that:

Yet more than ever, believers in the Lord -- great numbers of men and women -- were added to them.

So, Christian worship was not for the casual or curious: it was for believers who found that the worship of the early Church corresponded with and confirmed their deepest human aspirations, and nurtured a God-given hope for the future in Jesus Christ; nor was it for drifters and dabblers, but for the committed who realized that faith in Jesus could overcome the greatest fear of all, that of death itself:

I am the first and the last, the One who lives.  Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. (Revelation 1:17-18)

That distinctive character of early Christianity is made abundantly clear at the very end of St. John’s Gospel where we are told:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

Now, no one liturgy can adequately express the full significance of Holy Mass, and so, whatever liturgy Mother Church might adopt, it would not be without its weaker aspects.  The atmosphere of our old Mass, for example, although clearly divine, could, and did for some, seem humanly distant and cold: for holiness over-emphasized can become humanly alienating.   Our modern, post Vatican II liturgy, on the other hand, although more clearly inviting and friendly as a family celebration, can -- and in some cases does -- easily become over-human with little sense of divine presence.  Too much emphasis on family easily degenerates into familiarity.

Therefore it is fitting that we who celebrate the Eucharist according to the modern, family, liturgy, take careful notice of the reverence which is so prominent a feature of today’s readings:

When I saw One like the Son of Man, I fell at His feet as though dead. He touched me with His right hand and said, "Do not be afraid; I have the keys to death and the netherworld”.

Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you!" Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see My hands, and reach your hand and put it into My side; do not be unbelieving, but believe."  Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Thomas, have you come to believe because you have seen Me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."

We must never forget that we meet Jesus most nearly, most clearly, most surely, at holy Mass.  You will remember how the two disciples on the way to Emmaus met a most impressive and sympathetic stranger who walked and talked with them on the way; and although this man was able to explain all the scriptures concerning Jesus in such a way that their hearts burned within them; nevertheless, they did not recognize Him as Jesus until the moment when, as St. Luke tells us (24:30-31):

While He was at the table with them, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.

It is the same for us today: our key to understanding life, our key to appreciating the Scriptures, is given us through our personal appreciation of, encounter with, and response to, Jesus at Holy Mass; it is here that we are closest to Him, because it is at Mass that He comes closest to us, bestowing His Spirit of wisdom and understanding upon all who look for Him in sincerity of faith and love.

Although still one of us, Jesus is now in glory, and as the first Christians came to recognize and most firmly believe, He holds the keys of death and the netherworld.  He is the One rightly addressed as “My Lord and my God”, the only One able to demand faith without sight.  And indeed, if we look a little closer we can see the divine majesty of Jesus even more clearly, because in our second reading we heard of the Risen Lord saying:

"Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last.”

Now, those words “I am the First and the Last” were spoken of God Himself by the prophet Isaiah on three occasions, of which here is one:

Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel: 'I am the First and I am the Last; there is no God but Me. (Isaiah 44:6)

And so, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us both gratefully tell out our joy and renew our reverence during this holy Mass in which we offer both the sacrifice of our crucified Saviour and celebrate the presence of the Risen Lord, before most humbly opening our hearts to welcome Him and His most Holy Spirit into the ‘nitty, gritty’ of our lives and being through reception of the Eucharist.  For, recalling how much Jesus suffered for us, we rejoice in and give thanks for the love that drove Him to such lengths; and we likewise draw deep confidence from our awareness of the fact that He is indeed our Brother, thanks to the flesh and blood He glorifies and yet deigns to share with us.  Above all such joy and confidence, however, when we go on yet further to consider the fact that He wills to eventually make us, in Himself, true children of the Father and sharers in His own eternal glory and blessedness before the Father -- only then, can we begin to realize how deep should be our reverence for Him Who, though being Himself the only-begotten and eternally-beloved Son of the Father, has become for us the Conqueror of sin and death, and Lord of Life, able and willing to offer us the possibility of such a transcendent destiny through the Gift of His most Holy Spirit that we might both embrace and fulfil it.

Though called, endowed, and destined thus to become true children and heirs in the Father’s heavenly kingdom, so long as we live on this earth we walk by faith, as St. Paul, the ‘Doctor of the Gentiles’ said:

In the gospel, the righteousness from God is revealed, from faith to faith, as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."  (Romans 1:17)

And it was for that reason that Paul told his converts in Philippi (2:12):

My dear friends, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 

And again in his first letter to his converts in Corinth (15:53-57):

This corruptible (body) must put on incorruption, and this mortal (body) must put on immortality … when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory”.

Only when that final victory is secured will our rejoicing be such as to totally express and transfigure us; and then indeed, confirmed as children and heirs, we will sing with sublime and totally reverential love and awe:

Thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Until that moment of eschatological fulfilment, People of God, this our Easter Eucharist offers us the most authentic foretaste of the heavenly and eternal celebration of God and His Christ; and therefore it is here at Mass that we can and should most fittingly give whole-hearted expression to our present joy and reverential gratitude as disciples of Him Who is: 

The first and the last, the One Who lives: once dead but now alive forever and ever, holding the keys to death and the netherworld.

(Adapted 2016; not given anywhere in this form.)

                              

Easter Sunday 2016

Easter Sunday 2016

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

On this Easter morning we are gathered to rejoice in the Lord for the glory and beauty of His triumph over sin and death and for the wondrous salvation He has thereby won for us.

If we look back to our origins we can learn there something of the true significance of what, at first glance, would appear to have been the utter degradation and revolting ugliness of Our Lord’s sufferings and death on Calvary.

God had been wonderfully good to us at our creation: making, forming, us in His own image and likeness to rule over all that He had made in a way that would give glory to His most holy Name and provide for all our needs.   There was, therefore, a close bond of friendship between God and our forebears, and indeed, He even used to walk in the garden of Eden conversing with them:

The Lord God (was) walking in the garden in the cool of the day (and) called out to the man …

There had been only one restriction to Adam’s total freedom in the garden, and that had been established when God had told him:

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. (cf. Genesis 2:15 seq.)

Notice first of all, People of God, that ‘knowledge of’ means real, ‘physical and full knowledge’ not merely ‘theoretical awareness, philosophical knowledge of’.  Therefore the prohibition was made by God because such fruit would actually be harmful to Adam … ‘eat of it and you shall surely die’: not out of petulant anger, but most surely: for one who turns away or aside from God, by that very fact, cannot share immortality, which is essentially divine, with God.

Adam’s appreciation of God’s goodness was in no way diminished by that warning since there was nothing whatsoever in the Garden which called for Adam to have such knowledge of evil nor was there any good being withheld from him by God, for Adam was urged to cultivate and care for the garden in every respect.  Indeed, we learn next how harmonious and lovingly considerate was God’s relationship with Adam, for we are told that God, having taken careful note of Adam’s situation, decided:

It is not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper suited to him; and while (Adam) was asleep (God) took one of his ribs and built the rib into a woman.  When He brought her to the man, the man said, “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called ‘woman’ for out of man this one has been taken.”  (cf. Gen. 2:18-23)

Thus there was indeed joy and closeness between Adam and God out of which Eve was herself formed.

However, the Serpent managed to poison Eve’s mind by insinuating that God’s command forbidding them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had been made not out of love for them but out of His own oppressive authoritarianism, and thus the nature of the bond between God and the couple He had created became disturbed before being ultimately determined by the issue of obedience: for Adam, weakly opting to go along with Eve in disobedience to God’s warning/command, thereby inevitably lost his participation in God’s immortality and became subject to death and suffering.

That, dear People of God, is why Jesus declared so very frequently that He had come among men not to do His own will but the will of Him Who had sent Him:

                My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me.

                I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.

I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38)

Jesus made many more such assertions so that we might most surely recognize the root of our human sinfulness and suffering.

Thus, there are two most important points for all disciples of Jesus to appreciate from the very beginning: first of all, there can be no true love for God in one subject to disobedience; disobedience is the root of all our evils and of our alienation from God; we cannot ‘pick and choose’ with obedience and disobedience before God.   Secondly, the obedience we owe to God can never rightly be cold or automatic, for that is a betrayal of its original and most authentic nature … for obedience is essentially the supreme expression of truly human and child-like love for, and total confidence in, God our Father.

Now, bearing in mind what we have learnt about our origins, let us look for the glory and the beauty of Our Lord’s obedient Passion, Death, and Resurrection brought about on Jerusalem’s mount of ignominy, Calvary.

We were told in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles that:

                They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree.

How wonderfully beautiful!!   The beautiful fruit of God’s good tree in Eden – which, with the Serpent’s deception of sensuous Eve and exploitation of Adam’s weakness, had become a stone of stumbling, is now totally transformed by Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice into the life-enhancing, life-enriching, life-fulfilling, fruit of divine bounty which is offered to us in the Eucharist!! Supremely desirable indeed for the gaining of wisdom; not mere knowledge of good and evil, but wisdom sublime and divine; a transformation symbolized, most beautifully for us disciples of Jesus, no longer by a snake pierced through and lifted up high on a pole as under Moses, but by God’s most beautiful fruit hanging on a tree.

What delight in His Father, what love for us, enabled Jesus to hold His head high throughout those atrocious torments on the Cross?  Of that we are told in the Psalter:

Blessed is the man (whose) delight is in the law (the command) of the Lord … He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. (Psalm 1:2-3)

Later we read (Ps. 110:5, 7.):

The Lord says to my Lord sit at My right hand while I make your enemies your footstool. … At your right hand is the Lord Who crushes kings on the day of His wrath, Who judges nations (yes, Father, for Jesus always does what pleases You) ... Who drinks from the brook by the wayside (signifying Your Gift of the Holy Spirit); and thus, (like the tree planted by streams of water) holds high His head. 

owHoHHow wonderful!!

                They put such a man to death by hanging Him upon a tree

where He was destined to become the fruit of salvation, the fruit of Calvary, not to be sneakily grasped at the serpent’s suggestion, but meant, by the Father Himself, to be taken and received with faith and humble Eucharistic gratitude:

Take this, all of you, and eat it, this is My (Son’s) Body which will be given up for you.

               

When the serpent deceived Eve he had promised her that:

When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, who know both good and evil.

Our blessed Lord and Saviour, on the other hand, opens our eyes to the full truth of our situation when He offers us the strength of His grace together with a call to repent, warning us that only those who humbly believe in Him and in His Father’s merciful goodness will be able to receive with profit the full fruit of His sacrifice and the wisdom of His Most Holy Spirit.

People of God, today we should rejoice!   Rejoice in God’s infinitely beautiful wisdom that extends throughout all ages and shapes all our destinies; rejoice in His omnipotent and universal might, that manifests itself in a Son willing to suffer the loss of all in order to conquer sin and to save His Father’s chosen ones; rejoice in the goodness of Him Who knows no evil and suffers no evil, and Who -- in His only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ and by His Most Holy Spirit -- is become our Light and Life, our Joy and Peace, uniquely able to transform all evils to His greater glory and our eternal salvation.