Easter Sunday

(William Adolphe Bouguereau, The Holy Women at the Tomb, 1893)



But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." (Luke 24:1-5)

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:29-32)

And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." (Acts 1:9-11)

So often we are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. The women went to the tomb looking for a dead man when the One they sought was alive. The two men travelling on the road to Emmaus did not recognize Jesus who was with them on the journey. They only recognized him in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist. At the Ascension, the apostles are looking at Jesus leaving them, but He is not really leaving them.


I am reminded of a story that a priest told during a homily about a little boy preparing for his first Communion. This boy knew where to look for Jesus. Another priest was not convinced that the little boy understood enough about the Eucharist to take his first Communion. However, in talking with the priest, the boy pointed to the crucifix in the church and said, "That looks like Jesus but is not Jesus." Then pointing to the tabernacle, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus." Then, pointing to the priest himself, the boy said, "That does not look like Jesus but is Jesus. Only fatter." The boy understood the crucifix to be only an artistic portrayal of Jesus, the Eucharist to be the Real Presence of Jesus, and the priest when saying mass to be standing in persona Christi.

Echoing Matthew 25:31-46, Mother Teresa said: "I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" (Carol Kelly-Gangi, editor, Mother Teresa: Her Essential Wisdom, p. 19). As with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is in front of us every day in the people we encounter. We merely need the eyes of the little boy or Mother Teresa to see them and Him.

Jesus is not hiding from us. Yet we seem to look for Him where He isn't and miss Him where He is. May this great Easter season we are embarking upon fill us with the grace we need to seek first the kingdom, and then we will find the King.

Holy Saturday

Tomb by Sieger Köder, found at http://contemplativecottage.com/2010/04/02/holy-saturday/

For us today, Holy Saturday is a time of waiting, of expectation, of longing. For Mary, Mary Magdalene, the Twelve, and Jesus' other disciples, Holy Saturday was when time stood still. They had no expectation, no longing. They had only confusion and grief, disorientation and loss.

However, they also had hope. Their hope was a very different kind than ours. Their hope was that of Abraham's before offering his son, Isaac, as sacrifice. Their hope was that of Job when he had lost everything dear to him. Their hope was Daniel in the lion's den. Their hope was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace. Their hope was the psalmist's in Psalm 22, which begins with "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? (1) but ends with "Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it" (30-31).


This is the hope that holds out despite the temptation to despair, despite all empirical evidence pointing against hope, because this hope is rooted in trust in God's love for us.


For those of us on this side of the Resurrection, our hope is that of those who have heard the witness of the triumph of Love over Death. The seventeenth-century Carmelite, Brother Lawrence, had a profound epiphany of God's caring for us that led him to a radical trust in that care:


That in the winter, seeing a tree stripped of its leaves, and considering that within a little time the leaves would be renewed, and after that the flowers and fruit would appear, he received a high view of the providence and power of God, which has never since been effaced from his soul. That this view had perfectly set him loose from the world, and kindled in him such a love for God that he could not tell whether it had increased during the more than forty years he had lived since." (The Practice of the Presence of God with Spiritual Maxims, p. 15.)


It is because of the Resurrection that Brother Lawrence could see the return of Spring in terms of God's providence.

Perhaps those who loved Jesus and mourned his death remembered his words as Matthew tells us:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? and why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day." (Mathew 6:25-34)

Through their hope, those who loved Jesus sought first the kingdom, although many no doubt wondered if that kingdom had been but a beautiful dream, a mirage, an illusion. Yet, they hoped anyway.

Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. Let Holy Saturday be a time when we remember that heart-rending loss. However, let us also dwell in the luxury we have that they did not: we need not be anxious, because we know what tomorrow will bring: Life-giving Love.

Good Friday

(Georges Rouault, Christ on the Cross, 1936)

Since Good Friday was the day I longed for even while I was away from the Church and did not believe in God, it is fitting that I get back to this blog on this most compelling day.

We went to our parish's Good Friday liturgy and veneration of the Cross. My son referred to it as "the strangest mass" he'd ever seen. I told him that was very perceptive. After explaining that it was not a mass, we talked about what had happened and what it meant, and that this liturgy was special because this day is special.

Venerating the Cross has always had a special place in my heart. There is something about that act of humility, of love, that is very physical, very tangible. This whole day is a dramatic reminder that ours is not a religion of the spirit only, but of the body, and that the two are not opposed but enmeshed.

The modern painter, Francis Bacon, was interviewed by David Sylvester, and when discussing Picasso, Bacon spoke of Picasso's "brutality of fact" (David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, p. 182). The Crucifixion is all about the brutality of fact. That is what today is about: the brutality of fact. Sin is a fact that we attempt to rationalize away in the thick fog of ego, therapy, and relativism. Sin is a fact with brutal consequences. A most inconvenient fact, to re-frame Al Gore's famous title.

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus takes up a similar theme in his amazing book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross:

The gnostic impulse is still very much with us. We draw back from looking long and hard into the heart of darkness; we recoil from the brute facticity of the horror; we are scandalized by the truth that we worship a crucified God. As well we should be. (p. 120)

We see crucifixes every day. They hang in our bedrooms. But we do not truly see them. We do not truly see the dark event that these sanitized versions dimly reflect.

Bacon painted a triptych, Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962). The right panel appears below:

This figure is so visceral (literally), so repugnant. It captures the emotion of what the Crucifixion actually was, actually is. The reading from Isaiah at today's liturgy points to this revulsion:

He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom the people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. (Isaiah 53:3)

As Fr. Neuhaus says in the quotation above, if we understand the Crucifixion, we should be scandalized.

Bacon was inspired by the medieval crucifix of Cimabue (1272-1274):

If you invert the Cimabue painting, you get something of the broad outline of Bacon's figure. The language that Bacon uses to describe Cimabue's portrayal of Christ is significant:

You know the great Cimabue Crucifixion? I always think of that as an image - as a worm crawling down the cross. I did try to make something of the feeling which I've sometimes had from that picture of this image just moving, undulating down the cross. (The Brutality of Fact, p. 14)

Bacon's words may seem distrubing at first. After all, he is comparing the Savior to a worm crawling down the cross; how repulsive! However, Bacon's words should remind us of two types of Christ from the Old Testament. One is from the great messianic Psalm 22:

But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people. (Psalm 22:6)

The other type is from Numbers:

And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. (Numbers 21:8-9)

In the Gospel of John, Jesus explicitly links himself to the bronze serpent:

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." (John:3:14-15)

Perhaps Bacon's Crucifixion can help us see our crucifixes in a new light, one that helps us to encounter, however tenuously, the brutality of sin. Yet, we do not remain in that brutality. We know that brutality could not defeat love. Not the sentimental love we see in greeting cards or romance novels. This is a love that has a will of steel, because it is a will wholly consonant with the will of God.

Today is a good day to reflect on the line from the "Animus Christi": "Passion of Christ, strengthen us." Strengthen us to endure the pain of Good Friday and the loneliness of Holy Saturday, as we long for the resurrected joy of Easter.

Making Time for God

I often complain about "not having enough time for God" in my day. Apparently, God got a bit weary of hearing that, so he made time in my day this week. Twice. On Friday, I dropped my kids off at school, which means I get to work early. Usually that means I simply start work earlier. But as I neared my usual exit to work off the interstate, there was a huge traffic jam on the off ramp. Annoyed, I decide to go up to the next exit instead. It is the long way around, but it was going to be far shorter than sitting in the long line on the highway. But then a thought came to me. By taking this other exit, I would go right past a nearby church. This church has a Eucharistic adoration chapel which I like to go to, but I usually cannot go there, because they close the chapel at noon during the week. However, at this time it would be open. So I went there for a brief but fruitful period of adoration.

The second instance was Saturday. I was attending a day-long workshop on marriage at our local seminary. It was supposed to end around 3:15 that afternoon. We have confession at our parish on Saturdays at 3:00, and it had been 2 1/2 months since my last confession, so I was far past due to go. However, my son had been at a sleep over at a friend's house, and I didn't want to take too long relieving the parents. To my surprise and delight, the workshop ended before 3:00, and I was able to get to confession and still pick up my son just about on time.

I think this week God was saying, "Ok, this time I'll make the time in your week. But from now on, it's up to you!"

I was reading Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth today and came across the section where he talks about Jesus' temptation in the desert. The Holy Father writes:

At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives (p. 51-Large Print edition).

This is in fact what I do, although I tell myself soothing rationalizations (lies) to make me believe that I am doing something far less grievous than this.

All of which ties in nicely with today's readings at mass. The first reading from Sirach and the Gospel reading from Luke focus on humility. Sirach tells us: "Humble yourself more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God" (Sirach 3:18). Jesus is our example here. He, Who is God, humbled Himself to become a human and to suffer a death of derision and humiliation. Then in the Gospel, we hear: "For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 14:11). Jesus, Who humbled Himself, was exalted in the resurrection. We are told that if we wish to participate in the "resurrection of the righteous" (Luke 14:14), then we must humble ourselves.

It is important for me to remember that pride--the opposite of humility--is making myself more important than God, more important than my neighbor. It is about exalting my time, my will, above the One Who humbled Himself unto death--for me. I pray that I will keep this in mind the next time I wish to sleep in instead of saying morning prayer or turn in at night without praying, even though found the time to watch television.

Quote of the Day - Mother Angelica

"If you're not a thorn in somebody's side, you're not doing Christianity right."

Mother Angelica, Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality, edited by Raymond Arroyo, p. 18.

Children of Hope - Fostering Eucharistic Adoration among Children

I was listening to Catholic Answers on the radio and heard Fr. Antoine Thomas of the Community of St. John. I've heard him a number of times, and he does a wonderful job of explaining the faith to young children. He is working on a new project, Children of Hope, which encourages young children to adore Christ in the Eucharist. There are many good things at the website: http://www.childrenofhope.org/index.html. I highly recommend checking out this website and using it to either promote adoration with groups of children, or at least among the children in your life.

Quote of the Day - C.S. Lewis

Those who talk of reading the Bible "as literature" sometimes mean, I think, reading it without attending to the main thing it is about; like reading Burke with no interest in politics, or reading the Aeneid with no interest in Rome. That seems to me to be nonsense. But there is a saner sense in which the Bible, since it is after all literature, cannot properly be read except as literature; and the different parts of it as the different sorts of literature they are. Most emphatically, the Psalms must be read as poems; as lyrics, with all the licenses and all the formalities, the hyperboles, the emotional rather than logical connections, which are proper to lyric poetry.

C.S. Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms, p. 3.