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St Francis of Assisi, Jebel Ali

Lenten Mission 2013

Preached by

Fr Nicholas Schofield

(Archdiocese of Westminster, UK)

25th – 28th February 2013 25th February 2013

Palm Sunday: Following the Lord

Gospel Reading: Luke 19: 28-40 (1st Gospel for Palm Sunday, Year C)

Thank you so much for coming here tonight, to this first evening of our Parish Mission. It’s appropriate for us to make a Mission in Lent, to have this intensive time of prayer and reflection. In fact, Lent is really a sort of universal retreat that the whole Church makes in preparation for the great Paschal Mystery: Christ’s death and resurrection.

In these days Pope Benedict is very much in our thoughts and prayers, as he gets ready to step down from the Throne of Peter. Exactly thirty years ago he was preaching the Lenten retreat to Blessed John Paul II and his household. He said

To make a retreat is to go into training to be Christian. In the same way that walking and running are a means of exercising the body, a retreat [or a mission] is a spiritual exercise which prepares the soul to make an ever better response to the call we have received. The central mystery of our vocation is the same as that to which Lent is leading: the death and Resurrection of the Lord.1

Our four evenings together are concerned with making spiritual exercises - a reflection from me, a devotional response that we all make (such as Benediction or Stations of the Cross) and (perhaps most importantly) a carrying of all this into our lives, so that we

1 Ratzinger, Journey Towards Easter (1987), p7 our celebration of the Paschal Mystery in a month’s time is not just an abstract ritual but something that provides a blue print for our lives. As I already mentioned, the theme of my four sermons is Holy Week: particularly the four principal days of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And tonight we start with what is officially called ‘Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord’. There’s always something very dramatic and exciting about this day. As we arrive for Mass everything seems different. The priest is dressed in red (quite a shock because we’ve become so used to Lenten purple), we’re given palms that are blessed and which we can take home with us and the Mass begins with a procession. In our parish we walk from the church hall, along the pavement of the street and then into the church - as red London buses drive by, the passengers wondering what on earth we are doing. It’s one of those rare moments when the Sacred Liturgy becomes a very public witness.

Every time we celebrate Mass the great mysteries that we celebrate are made present. And so when we say Mass on the Feast of the Annunciation, we are there with Mary as she says her great ‘yes’ to God; at Christmas we rush joyfully to the crib in company with angels and shepherds; at the Epiphany we kneel in adoration with the Wise Men; as we hear the Gospels Sunday-by-Sunday, day-by- day we are really there, listening to the Lord’s teaching, basking in the light of His presence. You get the point! These great mysteries are made present but are veiled behind words of the Missal and sacramental symbols. In Holy Week, however, the Sacred Liturgy becomes quite theatrical. It’s as if the curtain has been rolled back. On Palm Sunday, we actually join the crowds waving palms and shouting Hosanna. In some places, there is even a donkey (real or wooden) in the procession. We are really there. With Jesus we enter Jerusalem - and so we enter Holy Week.

The Gospel that we read at the beginning of the procession recounts the familiar details of the first Palm Sunday. Don’t let the familiarity of the events hide from you their deep meaning. Jesus enters the Holy City - His City - as King. What did people expect a King of Israel to do? Well, one thing was to gather together the twelve tribes - and here, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, He is followed by His twelve disciples (representing the New Israel) and other followers, as well as curious fellow pilgrims. The Messiah was also expected to defeat Israel’s enemies - and here Jesus rides in to do battle not with the Romans but with an even fiercer enemy: sin and death. But He does not use a noble horse, so beloved of military leaders down the ages, but a poor donkey - and a borrowed one at that!

Some of you may have seen the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London last year and how Queen Elizabeth drove through London in a gold carriage, surrounded by cheering crowds. Well, imagine if she was surrounded by all the usual pomp and ceremony but sat in the back seat of a battered old car that was fit for nothing but the scrap heap. That’s the sort of shock that Jesus must have caused as He entered Jerusalem on a donkey. I often think of the poem by the English Catholic poet, G. K. Chesterton called ‘The Donkey’. Chesterton reminds us that the donkey is a humble beast and not the most beautiful of God’s creatures.

With monstrous head and sickening bray And ears like errant wings- The devil’s walking parody Of all four-footed things.

And yet the donkey had a great secret that it kept from its critics:

Fools! For I also had my hour- One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout around my head And palms about my feet. Jesus chose this unassuming creature to make His entry into Jerusalem. In doing so, He fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah: ‘behold your king is coming, sitting on the colt of an ass.’

You know, our knowledge of Scripture can often be compartmentalized. I’m sure most of us could recount the famous Gospel stories - the great parables and miracles and teachings - but do we know in what order they occurred? Which are located at the beginning of His public ministry in Galilee? Which can be found towards the end? I think I’d find that quite difficult! This is partly because of the way we use Scripture as Catholics - where do we hear the great Bible stories? In the liturgy; at Mass; Sunday by Sunday. This year, for example, we focus on the Gospel of St Luke. The liturgical cycle of readings is a wonderful way of reading and praying Scripture - a simple method is to meditate on the readings for that day’s Mass, as found in the Church’s Lectionary. The downside is that the Bible gets very fragmented. We know a lot about the individual episodes but lack a sense of the ‘broad sweep’ of events. That’s why, beside our prayer with the Bible, it’s important to study Scripture privately or in groups, always making sure we have a good book or guide to help us. I’m sure there are many opportunities to do this here in the Gulf!

Palm Sunday can only be fully understood if we know what happened before and after. For example, what does Jesus do once He has entered Jerusalem? Remember He is acting as the Messiah- King that the Jews were eagerly awaiting. Another thing that this great King was expected to do was cleanse or rebuild the Temple.

Once He entered Jerusalem, Jesus (like any good Jewish pilgrim) made his way to the Temple – that was the culmination of His pilgrimage. When you get to the top of the Mount of Olives there is a wonderful panoramic view of the city. The city walls and the golden Dome of the Rock particularly catch the eye, and there are lots of church towers, including (if you look hard enough) those of the Holy Sepulchre. In the time of Jesus the cityscape would have been just as impressive, though Jerusalem was (of course) much smaller. For a Jew it would have had so many holy associations and the building that truly captured the eye was the great Temple, one of the wonders of the ancent world, its gold and polished stones glittering in the sunlight. It must have been a welcome sight for the weary pilgrim!

So, Jesus made His way to the Temple and, according to St Mark, ‘began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons’ (Mk 11: 15). He is claiming authority over the Temple. After all, the great leaders of Israel were closely connected to the Temple: David planned it, Solomon built it, Hezekiah, Josiah and Judas Maccabeus cleansed it and Zerubbabel and Herod rebuilt it. But Jesus turns things on their heads and says that He is the new Temple, He is the new Holy of Holies, the new meeting place of God and man.

And when did this long journey to Jerusalem begin? Well, in a sense, it began in eternity and in the womb of Mary. When Our Lady said ‘yes’ to the Angel Gabriel, the Word was made flesh and already Jesus was orientating Himself towards Jerusalem, already He was beginning the journey that would one day lead to Palm Sunday and the other days of Holy Week!

More immediately, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus reached the Holy City in chapter 19 but He really began His journey to Jerusalem in chapter 9: ‘when the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem’ (Lk 9: 51). You will be familiar with two key events which immediately precede this, both preparing the way for this new orientation towards Jerusalem. Firstly, there was the Transfiguration, which was our Sunday Gospel, and just before that the Lord went to Caesarea Philippi, and asks His disciples that profound question: ‘who do you say that I am?’ Peter confesses that Jesus is ‘the Christ of God’, the long-awaited Messiah. St Luke doesn’t mention the Lord’s famous words calling Peter the ‘rock’ on which He will build His Church. Instead, Jesus immediately says: ‘the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised’ (Lk 9: 22). And He continues: ‘if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’ Not really the sort of words you’d expect from the Messiah.

Then the long journey began. Lots of familiar episodes occur on the way, moments in the journey that point towards the great mystery that is about to be fulfilled - we think of the healing of the blind man and the encounter with Zaccheus at Jericho or the raising of Lazarus and the anointing of Jesus’ feet at Bethany (just outside Jerusalem). It’s also good to notice that the well-trodden route to Jerusalem was an ascent, an upward climb - a physical ascent, especially during the final stage when the pilgrim started at Jericho (820 feet below sea level) and climbed up to Jerusalem (2,700 feet above sea level), but also a spiritual ascent, for they were going to the Holy City, where salvation would be won for us.

Walking uphill is never easy - it’s exhausting. A few years ago I visited the Lake District, which is in the north-west of England and full of beautiful hills and lakes. By global standards the summits are not very high but they still involve hours of walking. I decided to climb the nearest mountain to where I was staying, along with a friend - I had done this many times when I was younger but I was rather out of practice! It began with an easy, gentle walk (lulling me into a false sense of security) but then, suddenly, a steep ascent. After ten minutes or so I became disspirited and thought about giving up - the summit was out of sight, the steep path seemed endless and I was stopping every thirty seconds to catch my breath. Luckily I persevered and my friend said that once I got to the top I was ‘like a mountain goat’, taking in all the views and embarking on a long ridge walk that took us to some neighbouring summits. Exhaustion was replaced by exhilaration. So it must have been for the disciples as Jesus took them on the ascent to Jerusalem and prepared them for what lay ahead through His teaching - periods of exhaustion and thirst, doubt and confusion, times when it seemed easier to turn back, but mixed into it all moments of transfiguration, hints that God’s Divine purpose was being worked out.

And so it is with the journey of our lives. I always like the custom of keeping the palms from Palm Sunday and putting them around the house - behind a picture or crucifix, in the kitchen or the bedroom. They remind us that we are followers of the Lord. We have been baptised into His death and resurrection. We experience joys and sorrows in life and as we experience the cross we hope for resurrection. The palm is a badge of our discipleship and a symbol of the salvation for which we yearn! It gives us courage for the journey.

I’m sure you know the story of St Clare of Assisi. Palm Sunday 1211 was the day that she left her parent’s home and started a new life under the guidance of St Francis. Earlier that day she had received the palm from the hands of the bishop. In fact, unlike the rest of the congregation, did not go to the threshold of the sanctuary to receive the palm - her first biographer claimed that she was overwhelmed by shyness, perhaps she was preoccupied by the big step she was about to make. However the bishop, who knew her family, noticed this and went over to St Clare himself to present her with the palm. This became one of her artistic symbols. I have a painting of St Clare, holding the palm - an olive branch. It symbolized the new life that she would lead. For that Palm Sunday night she secretly left her home. Most of the houses in Assisi had two doors at the front - one was large, the main entrance; the other was much smaller; it was called the ‘Door of the Dead’ and was normally only used to allow the dead to be brought out. Those who came out this way never returned. This was the door that St Clare used to discreetly leave her home. By crossing its threshold she would never return; she was ‘dead’ to the world and lived only for the Lord. That was her vocation, her journey.

We all go through the pilgrimage of life, holding our palm. We walk with the Lord, following His call. One of the great principals of the Christian life is that we all have a vocation, that none of us are accidents, that we are all part of God’s plan. We are all called, whoever we are, to holiness of life. That is our baptismal vocation. But then we have a more specific vocation. There has been a tendency in the past to categorise this too neatly. Vocations were often thought of solely in terms of a sacrament or a religious ceremony, whether that be marriage, Holy Orders or the consecrated life. And that remains valid to a certain extent. However, there are many other types of vocations, as many (at the end of the day) as there are Christians! There are single people, for example, who serve the Lord without fitting into a neat category, perhaps by devoting much of their time to parish work or charity or just being there for their friends. There are those who feel they have not yet found their vocation – perhaps they spend their lives searching – and yet they have surely lived some sort of calling without realising it! There are also those who, for whatever reason, have to live a second or a third vocation due to circumstances. Perhaps a marriage has failed. Perhaps some good work, which they thought defined their life, is no longer possible. Think of Pope Benedict. We would have been forgiven for thinking that the Papacy was the culmination of his life as a priest, bishop and theologian. But now, unexpectedly for us at least, he enters a new chapter, he will have to live his calling in a different way.

Sometimes we make the subject of calling unduly complicated. At the end of the day, we are called to do the will of God. Discovering what this might be is not like solving a murder mystery or a crossword puzzle, full of cryptic clues. God’s will for us is often staring us right in our face. I often think of Fr Walter Ciszek, an American-born Jesuit who worked secretly in the Soviet Union and was imprisoned on suspicion of being a Vatican spy. He spent two decades in various prisons, gulags and work camps. Life was incredibly tough but he managed to maintain a strong interior life. Fr Ciszek realised that it is in the details of today that we find God’s will. He realized one day that ‘God’s will was not hidden somewhere “out there” . . . the situations [in which I found myself] were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal.’ Fr Ciszek even saw the individual jobs of hard labour in the Soviet camp as God’s will for him that day. ‘Every new day,’ he wrote, ‘every new hour of every day, every new circumstance and situation, every new act is an opportunity to exercise and grow...’

St Francis de Sales once gave some very practical advice in following God’s will: stick at it and don’t constantly look for novelties. ‘The devil,’ he wrote, ‘often tries to make us begin several things, so that we have too much to do ever to complete anything’ or ‘to distract us from achieving one thing, he will suggest something seemingly better; then to prevent us from bringing this to perfection, he will hold out a third. He is quite content for us to make any number of beginnings, as long as we never complete anything.’ Indeed, ‘”just as a shrub can never took root if it is frequently transplanted, and never come to anything, never flower,” so the man who transplants his heart from purpose to purpose cannot thrieve or grow in perfection – for perfection lies not in beginning, but in acievement’ – or at least in persevering and trying to achieve. So let us not flit from vocation to vocation, from one good cause to another, but rather stay fixed on the work that the Lord has begun within us, even (especially!) when our way of life seems monotonous, fruitless and without meaning! Whether our vocation involvesmarriage or priesthood, the consecrated life or the single life, we can’t expect to be on an emotional high all the time. Like that shrub St Francis refers to, which cannot be transplanted too many times if it is to remain fruitful, let us persevere and stay rooted in the corner of the vineyard that the Lord has chosen for us!

This is what we need to remember as we make our long spiritual journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem, as we accompany the Lord, proudly holding the palms of discipleship.

* * *

I remember being in Poland one Palm Sunday and seeing people decorating their palms with flowers. Palm Sunday is, in many ways, a joyful day. Jesus has ascended the mountain. The long journey is over and the destination has been reached. The Messiah enters His own city and, as He does so, Jerusalem, in a sense, reaches a state of fulfilment. But then we are reminded that those cries of ‘Hosanna’ will change, within days, into shouts of ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ The city of Jerusalem opens its gates to the King of Kings but within days it will reject Him and crucify Him outside the walls, at the place of the skull.

How often we do the same! We know that it is so easy to praise God with our lips one moment and then crucify Him again and again through our sins. We know that as we walk with the Lord, we often slip and stumble, or fall by the side, or take a wrong path in a different direction. Palm Sunday is not only a triumphal celebration of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem but also makes us aware of our unworthiness to be His disciples.

When Blessed Pope John XXIII was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer in 1963, his secretary, Mgr Capovilla, noticed that the Pope was uncharacteristically sombre and apprehensive. When he broached the subject with Pope John, he replied: ‘I know I’m dying and I’ll soon stand before the Lord – and that unsettles me.’ Mgr Capovilla was surprised at this answer – ‘but you are the Holy Father,’ he said, ‘revered by millions around the world as a spiritual leader and holy man. Surely your place in Heaven is assured.’ ‘To he who is given much,’ the Pope replied, ‘much will be expected.’ The closer we are to God, the closer we are to our goal, the more we realise that we are sinners, that we need Divine grace. I thought of this the other day as I was getting ready to go out for a social function. My bedroom is rather dark and so it’s difficult to see exactly what I’m putting on. I can see all my black shirts and black trousers in my wardrobe but it’s only when I come downstairs that I suddenly notice a tear here or a mark there. So it is with our souls. When we’re far from God, when we live in darkness – or, perhaps more usually, the twilight, when things appear rather dull – then we’re not always aware of our sins and failings. But when we are closer to God, our sins, our need for mercy is as clear as specks of dust in a morning shaft of sunlight.

An important part of Lent, an essential fruit of a parish mission is to go to confession. It’s like moving away from the darkness (or twilight) in which we can so easily live and into the warming glow of God’s presence, where our sins shrivel away. We can give thanks that God is at our side through the journey of life, encouraging us to return to His way, picking us up, healing our wounds. All we have to do is to ask for His help and mercy, all we have to do is let Him wash us clean of our dirt.

One of the most famous of Jesus’ parables is that of the Good Samaritan and rightly so. It’s often seen merely in terms of loving our neighbour (indeed, to be called a ‘Samaritan’ today is to be described as a generous person, willing to put the needs of others before their own). This lesson is certainly important but there’s more to the parable than that. You’ll remember that the traveller is making his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. This in itself is highly significant: a man going down from Jerusalem signifies a fall from grace, a departure from the presence of God. On his way he ‘fell into the hands of brigands’, he is robbed and left for dead. Not just in a literal sense but in a spiritual one. Falling into the hands of the enemy means falling into a life of sin. In the lives of the saints, the struggle with temptation is sometimes depicted as a physical battle. Perhaps the most famous example was St Anthony of Egypt, who led a life of solitude in the desert. We read that he was attacked by demons in the guise of wild beasts. The point is that when we turn our backs on God, we are robbed of our peace and our happiness. We are turned in on ourselves. We are spiritually wounded. All sorts of monsters appear to torment us.

Who can save us from this situation? The priest and Levite in the parable could simply be interpreted as self-righteous individuals who fail in charity. Or we might see them, rather, walking past the man because they are unable to save Him. Man cannot be saved by man. They too are sinners, dependent on God’s mercy. It’s rather like a man drowning – he cannot be saved by another in the same predicament but must wait for an outsider to come on a lifeboat. And so it is with us. We cannot save ourselves. We wait for one who comes from on high, who is weak enough to come down to our level and strong enough to save us.

The Good Samaritan, then, is an image of Jesus Christ our Merciful Saviour. He comes as an outsider and yet is one of us; truly God and truly man. When He sees the suffering man, He is filled with compassion, and carries him to the nearest inn - ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’, who carries our burdens. He tends the man’s wounds and washes them with oil and wine. Think about it – oil and wine. Doesn’t that make you think of the sacraments, those seven ways in which we tangibly encounter Christ Jesus? In particular, when we are weakened by the onslaught of temptation and wounded by sin we need the medicine provided by the sacrament of reconciliation.

Confession is the Church’s best kept secret. It’s so often misunderstood. In Rome there’s a beautiful church dedicated to St Mary Magdalen, herself a great model of penitence. In the church there are six confessionals, located along the sides, and above each there is a marble statue symbolising one of the qualities that we need to make a good confession: truthful, simple, humble, secret, faithful and sorrowful. Let’s think a bit more of those:

Truthful: we need to quite simply tell the truth. Don’t be like the man who said in confession, ‘Father, I stole a rope.’ He neglected to say that there was a cow at the end of the rope! Of course, being truthful can be painful and humiliating. We can see this, though, as part of the penance and part of the process of healing. It’s a bit like removing a blister. It hurts for a few seconds - but the pain is necessary so that it can be removed and we can be made better.

People often worry about the fact that they are confessing to a man - a priest. Obviously, if we know a priest very well it might be easier to go to another priest - I myself tend not to go to priests who are close friends! Priests - or certainly this priest! - find hearing confessions immensely edifying. Older manuals sometimes say that the confessor is a judge in the Divine Tribunal. Yes, to some extent, we have to determine an appropriate penance for the sins we hear and sometimes give firm advice but we never judge people personally. Priests themselves go to confession. Priests themselves sin and often feel great solidarity with the penitents who come before them - ‘yes,’ we think to ourselves, ‘that temptation is a problem for me too! Lord have mercy on me!’ Once somebody confessed - and here I’m not breaking the seal - that the last time they had been to confession was at the end of the Second World War. My reaction was not one of anger - ‘why haven’t you been to confession for such a long time’ - but rather one of joy - ‘welcome home!’

But, at the end of the day, we are confessing to God. The priest acts in the person of Christ and also on behalf of the Church, of all our brothers and sisters who we have also offended. We should confess to the priest as if the Lord Himself was sitting in the confessional - the Lord who knows us better than anyone (ourselves included), who loves us despite our sins, who can see into our hearts but wants us to be truthful in our confession out of love for Him.

Now let’s move onto the second quality for a good confession:

Simple: While being truthful, we shouldn’t go into too much detail. A confession does not need to be a mini-autobiography or (even worse) an apologia, a self-justification! Dates, names, descriptions are not necessary although the priest needs to have some idea of whether a sin was a ‘one-off’ or something that has become a habit, even a way of life, and he needs to know the basic circumstances - if you confess to being ‘impure’, for example, it could mean anything from having the occasional impure thought to full-blown adultery! Tell the truth and keep it simple - just confess the sins on your heart!

Humble: Going to confession is not only penitential - because it is rather uncomfortable to uncover all those dark areas that we hoped others would not notice - but it involves humility. This is one of the key virtues for a Christian. It doesn’t mean that we tell lies about ourselves - humility is not about saying you’re rubbish at football when actually you’re the team’s top scorer. Humility is about recognising the reality of things - that God is God, that we are not the centre of the universe, that we need His grace as an absolute necessity. Every time we make an examination of conscience and go to confession, we exercise humility and (in a positive way) bring ourselves down a peg or two. Confession is a great way of battling pride - and it should never be the occasion of it, so we should never start excusing ourselves while we acknowledge our sins and even say (as some do) ‘well, Father, I haven’t really sinned but I ask your blessing.’ We all have sins that need confessing and if we make a proper examination of conscience we will know what to say.

Secret: The Church has always been very strict about the secrecy, the seal of the confessional. A priest cannot break the seal even to save his own life, to protect his good name, to refute a false accusation or to help the police. Nor can he be compelled by law to disclose what he’s heard. You might have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie I Confess, in which a priest (Fr Logan) hears a murderer’s confession and then is framed for the murder himself - because the murderer had used the disguise of a priest. Fr Logan knew exactly who had committed the crime but cannot say anything.

A beautiful story which captures the reality of this topic is the life of St John Nepomuk, who lived in Prague during the fourteenth century. He was the spiritual director of the Queen. The King, who was called Wenceslaus (not to be confused with ‘Good King Wenceslaus’), had a bad temper and was jealous of his wife. He began to suspect that she had been unfaithful, even though her conduct was irreproachable. He had also taken a dislike to St John and tried to force him to reveal the Queen’s confessions. He even had him arrested and tortured, but all to no avail. In the end, on 20 March 1393, St John was thrown off the famous Charles Bridge in Prague and drowned in the swirling waters below. He subsequently became a patron not only of confessors but of rivers - his image is often seen on bridges in Central Europe, holding a crucifix and pointing to his lips in a gesture of secrecy.

No matter what sins you have to confess, they will be treated as absolutely confidential by the priest. I always like to tell people that priests are given a special grace at ordinaton - the grace of forgetfulness. I don’t mean forgetting about appointments or forgetting where you put your keys but forgetting the sins we hear in the confessional. If you asked me what I heard last time I heard confessions, well, firstly I can’t (because of the confessional seal) but also because I’ve really forgotten. Most importantly, God has forgiven and forgotten those sins and we can start again!

Faithful: We need to have faith in the sacrament. If we have omitted a serious sin then we will know in our heart of hearts. Otherwise we should not bring up the contents of a previous confession again. A sin that you have confessed is truly forgiven, no matter how grave it was. Of course, there may be consequences in the rest of our lives – the newspapers are full of the marks left behind by sin – but as far as our spiritual lives are concerned, leave the sin in the past because God has! Forgive yourself and keep moving forward.

We also need to be faithful to the sacrament and go regularly - I would say every 4-6 weeks or whenever we need to. But different priests and writers recommend different practises. Blessed John Paul II went every day. He knew he needed God’s grace for his unique ministry. Padre Pio said that ‘even if a room is closed, it is necessary to dust it after a week.’ Although venial sins are forgiven by the reception of Holy Communion or a sincere Act of Contrition, regularly confessing our venial sins and imperfections is an excellent tool for spiritual progress.

Sorrowful: We should repent our sins because we are sorry for them - and we are sorry not so much because we fear the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell but because we have broken our relationship with God. It is easy to feel sorry for some sins - sins we are ashamed of, sins that have hurt others, sins that have landed us in trouble. It might be harder to feel sorry for sins that we rather enjoyed (or thought we did) - an indulgent evening when we ate and drank too much, for example. We need to pray to God for the gift of true contrition.

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground this evening! We have accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem - the Messiah King who rode a donkey into His city! Palm Sunday was one point on Jesus’ long journey towards Jerusalem. There were many ups and downs along the way – high points like the Transfiguration and challenging moments like that tiring ascent from the lowest point on earth (the Dead Sea) to the holy mountain of Jerusalem! Our road of discipleship can often be exhilarating but also exhausting and frustrating. There are times when the way ahead seems unclear, when we lose sight of our vocation, when we don’t know why we’re here or where we’re going. There are frequent periods when we slip and stumble and go down the wrong path. But today we pray that we persevere in our pilgrimage, holding our palm of discipleship in the face of adversity, holding up our palm as a sign of the victory that has been won for us.

Devotional Response:

Examination of Conscience

As we close our reflection this evening, we pray for God’s healing mercy. We pray that the light of the Resurrection will shine in the darkest parts of our souls. We pray for the courage to go to confession this Lent, especially if we have been away a long time. And so, in the presence of God, we examine our consciences:

1. Have I doubted in matters of faith? murmured against God because of adversity? despaired of His mercy? Have I believed in or consulted fortune tellers?

Have I recommended myself regularly to God? Neglected my morning or evening prayers? Omitted my religious obligations because of human respect? Presumed upon God’s mercy in committing sin? Have I read books or papers opposed to the Church and her teachings? Did I make use of superstitious practices; such as believing in dreams, and charms, and the like? Have I spoken irreverently of persons, places or things which are dedicated to God and His Church?

2. Have I used the name of God or the saints with irreverence? Have I sworn without a good reason or cursed? Have I been guilty of blasphemy? 3. Did I miss Mass on Sunday or a Holy Day of Obligation, when it was possible for me to go? 4. Have I been obedient and respectful to my parents and lawful superiors? Have I been a good parent or employer? 5. Have I been the occasion of another’s sin through my bad example in word or deed? Have I been guilty of aggression, anger, hatred, revenge, or drunkenness? Did I refuse to speak to others? to forgive them? 6. & 9. Did I take pleasure in impure thoughts or desires? Have I been involved in inappropriate conversations or used pornography? Did I commit an impure act alone or with others? 7. and 10. Have I stolen anything? Have I been unjust in buying or selling? Have I damaged the property of others? accepted or kept stolen goods? paid my just debts as soon as possible? Has my daily work merited its salary? 8. Did I tell lies? Have I been guilty of rash judgment, detraction or calumny?

Is there anything else of which my conscience feels guilty?

Lord have mercy!

O my God...

Let us pray. Through the Passion of your Only Begotten Son, O Lord, may our reconciliation be near at hand, so that, though we do not merit it by our own deeds, yet by this sacrifice made once for all, we may feel already the effects of your mercy. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.2

26th February 2013

Maundy Thursday:

2 Prayer over the Offerings on Palm Sunday Receiving and Living the Eucharist

Reading: 1 Cor 11: 23-26 (2nd Reading, Mass of the Lord’s Supper)

Whenever I start reading a biography, I often find myself flicking to the last few pages just to see how the subject spent his last days on earth. Sometimes the stories can be dramatic – especially with great historical figures, who usually ended up getting killed in battle or assassinated or even being executed. Perhaps it sounds rather morbid but I find those final hours sum up the person. Much is made of last words, final actions, dying gestures because they express something about who that person was and what was important to them.

On this our second evening together we turn our thoughts to Maundy Thursday or (as it’s officially called in the Church’s Missal) the ‘Thursday of the Lord’s Supper’. On this day we witness Jesus’ last will and testament, we hear the words of a man who knew He was about to die. The Missal calls this day by an interesting name: In Cena Domini – ‘At the Lord’s Supper.’ On Maundy Thursday, through the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, we enter the Upper Room with Jesus and His disciples. And so the Triduum begins.

In those relatively comfortable surroundings of a meal shared with His closest followers, Jesus knew He was about to be put to death. Jesus knew that within hours He would be sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus knew His friends gathered around that very table would abandon Him, Jesus knew that He would be scourged and crowned with thorns and then stumble through the streets carrying that heavy cross. On Maundy Thursday evening we are In Cena Domini, ‘At the Lord’s Supper’ and we strain to listen to His last words.

Speaking personally, Maundy Thursday is my favourite part of Holy Week: I love the white vestments, the singing of the Gloria, the ringing of the bells and the decoration of the altar of repose (which represents the Garden of Gethsemane). When I was studying in Rome, where there are churches on almost every street, we would try to visit as many altars of repose as possible – one year I managed 27! It was amazing how many different designs and concepts were used in their creation.

But there is also a heavier and sadder dimension – the bells that we ring so enthusiastically during the Gloria will not be heard again until Easter. Then, after Mass, the church is dramatically stripped of cloths, candles and other adornments. It seems desolate and empty as our focus turns toward Mount Calvary.

So, what is Jesus’ final message to His followers? On this night, the Lord gave us three precious gifts. Firstly He showed us of the priority of loving, humble service. He washed His disciples’ feet, a dirty, unpleasant job normally reserved to a slave. This action is repeated at the evening Mass, when the feet of twelve parishioners are washed by the priest, a reminder that we need to imitate Christ and to place ourselves at the service of our brothers and sisters. The ceremony is sometimes referred to as the Mandatum or ‘command’ – from this Latin root we get the words ‘Maundy’, ‘mandate’ and ‘mandatory.’ Just before He died, Jesus gave us a new commandment: to love one another.

Washing feet was a necessary action at any meal, given the dust and dirt of the Palestinian roads, and it was a powerful symbol that tells us so much about who Jesus is. When you think about it, throughout His earthly life He lay down the clothes of His glory, He wrapped around his waist the towel of humanity and made Himself a servant king. He washed the disciples’ dirty feet so that they could enjoy the divine banquet to which they were invited. As Pope Benedict says, ‘in the holy sacraments, the Lord kneels ever anew at our feet and purifies us’. Jesus washes us in the waters of baptism and gives us new life; He strengthens us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit at Confirmation; He forgives us our sins in Confession; He comforts the sick in the Anointing; He joins man and woman together in a love that reflects God’s own inner life in Matrimony; He allows a priest to act in His own person through Holy Orders and finally, most amazingly, He gives us very self in the Holy Eucharist. It is these last two sacraments that Jesus instituted at the Last Supper: the Holy Eucharist, which we will think about in a moment, and the Sacred Priesthood, created precisely so that the Eucharist can be celebrated and the ministry of loving, humble service be continued.

A Mystery to Be Celebrated

Let’s think a bit, this evening, about the Holy Eucharist and its place in our life. The reason we come to Mass is because Jesus said: ‘Do this in memory of me.’ Remembering is a key dimension of the Eucharist, just as it is a central part of Holy Week. The Last Supper itself happened at the time of Passover, that great Jewish festival of remembering – it recalled the crossing of the Red Sea, the entrance into the Promised Land and Israel’s protection from the Angel of Death thanks to the blood of the lamb. However, the people of Israel did not believe they were merely remembering past events, just as we might remember our childhood or our wedding day. They believed that through the ritual of the Passover meal the past came into the present and the present into the past.

There has been much discussion about the exact nature and timing of the Last Supper. Was it really the Jewish Passover meal? Matthew, Mark and Luke all speak of it being so, though Jesus added some new details: the offering of the bread and wine – His body and blood. St John, on the other hand, suggests that the Last Supper actually happened just before the Jewish Passover. It is hard to imagine the authorities going to all the trouble of capturing and judging Jesus on one of their holiest days and when they led Him before Pilate’s court they avoided entering the praetorium ‘so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover’. This indicates that Jesus’ trial and crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover, the ‘day of preparation’, not on the feast day itself.

In his book, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict favours St John’s approach. As the Pope writes, the Last Supper may not have been the Jewish Passover exactly but

it was Jesus’ Passover. And in this sense he both did and did not celebrate the Passover: the old rituals could not be carried out – when their time came, Jesus had already died. But he had given himself, and thus he had truly celebrated the Passover with them. The old was not abolished; it was simply brought to its full meaning.

So, Jesus was crucified on the day that the Jews were preparing for the Passover meal and there is a profound meaning in this for, as the pope says, ‘Jesus died on the Cross at the very moment when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. The death of Jesus and the sacrifice of the lambs coincided.’ I like to think that as Jesus was carrying His cross to Calvary He would have passed lambs being led to the Temple – in one direction the lambs of the old covenant, in the other the lamb of the new covenant, the Lamb of God who took upon Himself the sins of the world and won for us eternal life.

The Mass unlocks the secrets of Good Friday. The sacrifice of the cross happened only once. But this sacrifice was so decisive for our salvation that Jesus left us a means of sharing in it – after all, we could not be there. Every Mass makes present the sacrifice of the Cross. The bread is broken just as Christ’s body was broken; the wine is poured just as Christ’s blood was shed; and in the consecrated bread and wine the Lord is really and truly present. The Mass is a way of plugging into the great mysteries of the death and resurrection of Christ, of receiving the fruits of our Redemption, even though we live 2,000 years after these great events. That’s why, for Catholics, it is the Mass that matters. Over the centuries many have suffered, even been put to death, just because they loved the Eucharist – we think of the martyrs of Roman times, the martyrs of sixteenth century England, even those who suffer today. Mass was said secretly, for example, in the Nazi concentration camps. Several hundred priests were placed in the camp at Dachau in southern Germany – many were worked to death but they lived in order to say and be nourished by the Mass. Here’s a brief passage written by a Dachau survivor:

Many Polish priests worked in the plantation greenhouses. While one of them kept guard and the other comrades pretended to be working, the Polish priest who had spent the longest time in the camp knelt on the ground, with his face turned towards the greenhouse so as to give the impression that he was weeding. Indeed, the SS-sentries might be spying from their watchtower. The kneeling priest had pressed a small portable altar into the ground and there he celebrated Mass. Many comrades hurried by, holding grass or plants in their hands as if they had some work to do there. They also knelt down and received Holy Communion from their own hands. The Poles were never caught when performing this holy action in these modern catacombs.

Even more recently, we have the witness of a Vietnamese bishop, Francis Xavier Van Thuan who was imprisoned between 1974 and 1987 and wrote of his secret Masses in his prison camp:

Every day, with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of my hand, I would celebrate Mass. This was my altar, and this was my cathedral!...Each time I celebrated Mass, I had the opportunity to extend my hands and nail myself to the cross with Jesus, to drink with Him the bitter chalice. Each day in reciting the words of consecration, I confirmed with all my heart and soul a new pact, an eternal pact between Jesus and me through His blood mixed with mine. Those were the most beautiful Masses of my life! Over the centuries the Eucharist has been celebrated in many different places: in the catacombs and in the great cathedrals, in wayside chapels and football stadiums, in the noise of the trenches and the silence of the cloister. It is the Mass that matters.

No wonder that the Eucharist, the Mass is called the source and summit of our lives. A Franciscan saint, Leonard of Port Maurice, used to tell his people ‘why do you not hasten to the churches to hear as many Masses as you can? Why do you not imitate the angels, who, when a Holy Mass is celebrated, come down in myriads from Paradise and take their stations about our altars in adoration to intercede for us?’ If the Mass is really all the things we believe it to be, then we would never deliberately miss it! I’m always surprised by parishioners who say quite blatantly: sorry Father, we can’t come to Mass next Sunday because my son’s got a football match or we’re going to a family party. These things are well and good but they should never replace the Mass. That is our first priority on a Friday or Sunday; other things fit around it. The Mass is not just another thing to do during the busy weekend; it’s the most important thing we do, it’s the anchor of our week. And we go not just because we have to but because we want to!

Coming to Mass almost always involves some sacrifice on our parts (rather appropriately!) – if we have young children, if we are forced to work inconvenient hours, if we are caring for sick relatives, if we live a long way from the church (which I imagine is the case for many of you since there are only a handful of churches in this country), if we are feeling tired or overwhelmed by all the things we need to do. The saints made great efforts to attend Mass – St Juan Diego, the visionary of Guadalupe, and St Maria Goretti, the young Italian martyr of chastity, both had to make a journey on foot of about 15 miles to get to Sunday Mass. But our efforts are not wasted. St Augustine once said ‘every step one takes while travelling to hear Holy Mass is counted by an angel. One will be given a high reward for them by God in this life and in eternity.’ People often say that Mass is boring. After all, it’s much the same each week and we’ve all experienced liturgies which have been badly celebrated or where we are badly distracted. I suppose one of the problems is that we’re used to being entertained immediately through the television or computer and so we expect to be entertained in church. But the Church’s liturgy functions on a different level.

Many people would probably say that they attend Mass to pray for their needs and the needs of the world, to spend some time in reflection, to celebrate our common faith and to be part of a worshipping community. Yes, all those things are part of what we do. But the most important thing is that we come to adore the Almighty – meaning we recognise His infinite might, His great majesty, His love without end. We adore Him because He made us and we are made to be with Him. Everything that we do at Mass – whether it be the singing or the gestures or even the appearance and cleanliness of the church - has to be conducive to adoration. It must be centred on Him rather than on us. If liturgy is celebrated well then it draws us into the fullness of life in Jesus Christ.

You might have seen Pope Benedict’s Mass on Ash Wednesday, his final liturgical celebration as bishop of Rome. At the end a cardinal gave an address of thanks and there was a long, standing ovation from the large congregation. It was very moving to see – there was a wonberful shot of one of the papal M.C.s wiping away the tears from his eyes. The Holy Father was at first very gracious, smiling and nodding, but as the applause continued you could see him getting uncomfortable. He had often taught that the liturgy is God- centred not man-centred and, although it was right for this historic moment to be marked in such a way and for the people to express their emotion, the Pope obviously thought that the clapping was distracting everyone from the main function of the Mass. So at last he gently said, ‘grazie, let us return to our prayer!’ The clapping stopped and the Pope gave the final blessing. For most of the Mass, the priest faces the people – either over the altar or from the pulpit or lectern - and this can give the wrong impression. I’ve certainly been to services where the priest thinks he’s the centre of attention and acts a bit like a chat show host. But at Mass (despite appearances!) the priest is not primarily addressing the people – he does, for example, during the sermon, but when he says the prayers of the Mass, and especially the Eucharistic Prayer, the idea is that he’s talking to God on behalf of the Church community. In fact, the priest acts in persona Christi – in the person of Christ, who is Himself the Supreme High Priest, eternally offering His Father love and praise. As members of the Church, the Body of Christ, we join our voices to His. What we do here is a foretaste of the eternal liturgy in Heaven.

We’re used to being passive spectators – watching TV or surfing the internet. But although it is God who is at work in the liturgy, our participation at Mass is anything but passive. In fact, the Church encourages us to take a full, active part. This has often been misunderstood to mean that everybody should be doing something at Mass, that if we’re not involved in a ministry (whether it be welcoming or reading or singing or helping distribute Holy Communion) then we’re missing out in some way. Pope Benedict himself has said that ‘the word ‘part-icipation’ refers to a action in which everyone has a ‘part.’’ The principal action, he says, are the prayers and readings, especially the Eucharistic Prayer. If this is the principal action – the work of God – what is our part?

Firstly, we participate in Mass externally. We make the responses and listen to the readings. It might help, in fact, to read them before Mass so that we are more receptive to them. If there are hymns, we try our best to join in and not just leave it to the choir – it doesn’t matter if we can’t sing. As St Augustine said, to sing is to pray twice (even if we sing out of tune). We also participate with our bodies. As we come into church we take holy water (a reminder of our baptism) and make the sign of the cross, invoking the Holy Trinity and reminding ourselves of the cross that won our salvation. As we go into our pews we genuflect on one knee (if we can) in recognition of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. We don’t just make a little bob but put one knee on the ground, letting it rest there for a moment. Remember, we are praying with our bodies.

During Mass we take various postures. Standing is a sign of reverence; in Judaism, it is the ordinary posture for prayer. Sitting, as we do during the readings and sermon, is a gesture of receptivity – of readiness to be instructed, of listening with the ear of the heart, as St Benedict says. During the Eucharistic Prayer and after Communion we kneel, an attitude of humility and adoration (which is what the liturgy is all about). We pray with our bodies at special moments. During the ‘I confess’ at the beginning of Mass, we beat our breasts out of repentance for our sins. Before the Gospel, we make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, mouths and chests, praying that God’s Word will remain in our minds, our lips and our heart. During the creed we bow down at the words ‘and was made man’, in honour of the Incarnation.

As well as actively participating through our actions and words, we also participate in an interior way. We need to pray the Mass. We can do this in many ways, perhaps by following the prayers in a Missal or prayer book, by praying silently or even by quietly reciting the rosary. Whatever helps us.

The second Vatican Council said that everyone can participate in offering the Mass: ‘not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves.’ It is not only the bread and wine that is offered. We offer ourselves, our joys and sorrows, our strengths and weaknesses, our hopes and worries. We ask that they will be transformed and made holy, just as the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood. Compared to this, everything else is secondary.

So the Mass is anything but boring. We come week by week to listen to the life-giving words of Scripture, to witness ordinary bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood, to stand at the foot of the cross as that redemptive sacrifice is renewed and to be ourselves united to the Lord through communion. We come to church not as silent spectators but to participate through our words and posture and through joining the priest’s offering with that of our lives.

A Mystery to Be Adored

The Mass is a mystery to be celebrated (and celebrated in the proper way). It is also a mystery to be adored and here we think of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, which makes every church a sanctuary of God’s presence at all times. When I was a seminarian in Rome, some of us took visitors on guided tours around St Peter’s Basilica. We would explain the history of the church, describe all the great works of art and give some spiritual reflections. One student was showing some Japanese tourists around – who were very polite and enthusiastic but with no knowledge about Jesus or the Church. So the seminarian had to go back to basics. He finished the tour, as he always did, with a visit to the Blessed Sacrament chapel, where he gave a short explanation about the beliefs of Catholics. A Japanese man spoke out: ‘let me get this right,’ he said, ‘you believe that Jesus, the One you believe to be the Son of God, the Word made flesh, is really and truly there in that round, flat piece of white bread, which we can all see in front of us.’ ‘Yes, sir’, replied the seminarian. ‘If that’s true then this is the greatest work of art in this basilica!’

The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Tabernacle is indeed the greatest work of art! I’m told that NASA did some experiments with a special type of camera that could see the energy levels in the human body. On the monitor this shows up as a sort of aura around the body. They started experimenting in a hospital and discovered that when a person is dying, the aura around the body gets thinner and thinner. The scientists carrying out this investigation were watching a dying man on the screen when he received a visitor. He took something out from his pocket and the whole room was filled with light, so much so that they could no longer see what was happening. They ran to the room to see what was causing this. They discovered that a priest was giving the dying man Holy Communion. And one of the scientists conducting the experiment later decided to become a priest himself!

The Mass is extended by the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in our midst. This is something that quite overwhelmed Cardinal Newman when he became a Catholic in 1845. Writing to a friend, he said ‘I am in a house in which Christ is always present as He was to His disciples, and where one can go in from time to time through the day to gain strength from Him’.

A few months later he wrote of a peaceful church he found in Milan: ‘nothing moves there but the distant glittering Lamp which betokens the Presence of our Undying Life, hidden but ever working, for us, though He has entered into His rest. It is really most wonderful to see this Divine Presence looking out almost into the open streets from the various Churches, so that at St Laurence’s we saw the people take off their hats from the other side of the street as they passed along; - no one to guard It, but perhaps an old woman who sits at work before the Church door, or has some wares to sell’. What a great gift! We live in the wrong time and place to actually see Jesus, to speak with Him and touch Him. But here in this church we have unlimited access to Him under the appearance of bread!

The future Pope Benedict once said in a homily:

God has truly come to dwell among us in the Eucharist. He became flesh so that he might become bread…God is not the great unknown, whom we can but dimly conceive. We need not fear, as heathen do, that he might be capricious and bloodthirsty or too far away and too great to hear men. He is there, and we always know where we can find him, where he allows himself to be found and is waiting for us. Today this should once more sink into our hearts: God is near. God knows us. God is waiting for us in Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Let us not leave him waiting in vain! Let us not, through distraction and lethargy, pass by the greatest and most important thing life offers us.

This reminds me of an old prayer card that belonged to my Belgian grandmother, showing Jesus as the ‘divine prisoner of the tabernacle’ and with the lines of a poem by St Therese:

Oh! My divine Master, in the depths of the tabernacle, For 1800 years a prisoner out of love, Despite our coldness, through a constant miracle, Near us You have fixed Your dwelling place.

When I went to the Holy Land I had the great privilege of celebrating Mass in Bethlehem. It was wonderful to say Mass in the place where Christ was born and strange to sing Christmas carols at the end of October. Most of us never get to visit Bethlehem but we are regularly in touch with another place called by the same name, which is the dwelling of the same Jesus, and where we go to adore Him. Bethlehem means ‘House of Bread’. Every Mass we celebrate makes present not just Christ’s death and resurrection but His coming into the world. Just as He was born in Bethlehem, so He is born again on our altar – God-with-us. Just as He lived those first weeks in Bethlehem, so he can be found in another ‘House of Bread’ – the tabernacle, before which the red lamp constantly flickers. Every church, every chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is kept is a little piece of Bethlehem in our midst. In Bethlehem, remember, there was no room for Him in the inn. Some scholars say that the word we usually translate as ‘inn’ really means ‘guest room’ – so that there was no room for Jesus not so much in the local hotel but in the guest room of St Joseph’s family house. So, the child was born in the manger, in that part of the property where the animals came in during the night for shelter and safety. That Christmas night he was kept warm by the ox and the ass, he was cared for by His loving parents and visited by a group of bewildered shepherds. But everyone else ignored Him! And we can very easily ignore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament or take the Real Presence for granted.

This makes us think of our attitude to Holy Communion – which, for some, is a daily practise. The moment of Holy Communion is indeed a precious one, a time of intimate encounter with the Lord. It is important that we make the most of the gift that we have been given. A lot of us eat our meals very quickly, almost without thinking. Perhaps we eat breakfast without sitting down – I sometimes balance a piece of toast with one hand and check my e- mails with another. Or we gulp down our lunch while watching TV or sending a text. The occasions when we sit down for a long meal, at which we slowly eat the food and enjoy the company of family and friends get rarer and rarer. We live in a fast food culture – and the danger is that we bring this mentality to church. We take Communion as if it is, well, a take away rather than a sacred banquet which should be savoured. We eat the host and drink from the chalice without thinking who it is that we receive. And do we talk to Him, do we commune with Him – or are we as distracted as if we were eating our meal in front of the TV?

St Teresa of Ávila urged her sisters not to rush out after Mass but to treasure the opportunity for thanksgiving: ‘Let us detain ourselves lovingly with Jesus,’ she said, ‘and not waste the hour that follows Communion.’ Another saint, Philip Neri, once told two altar servers to take their candles and accompany a parishioner who had left church immediately after receiving Communion. When the rather embarrassed man asked the saint why he had done this, he replied: ‘We have to pay proper respect to Our Lord, Whom you are carrying away with you. Since you neglect to adore Him, I sent two acolytes to take your place’.

Here we can do a quick examination of conscience:

1) Do I always show a mark of respect (such as a genuflection) when I pass the tabernacle? By genuflecting we pray with our body and soul and reemind ourselves that God is there. 2) Do I keep a prayerful silence in church or do I prefer to talk to my friends? 3) Do I prepare for Mass, perhaps by saying some favourite prayers or reflecting on the readings, and do I make a thanksgiving after Communion. 4) Do I try to visit the church of St Francis outside of Mass times just to spend a few minutes in prayer before Jesus in the Tabernacle? These visits to the Blessed Sacrament prolong our Mass, our Communion… 5) Do I take the Mass for granted, is it just part of the weekly routine, or do I try to participate in every Mass (as the old maxim goes) as if it were my first Mass, my last Mass and my only Mass.

A Mystery to Be Lived

Finally, the Holy Eucharist is a mystery not just to be celebrated and adored but to be lived! The Mass is not an abstract moment in the week, an esoteric ritual with no connection to reality. No, the Mass is a mystery that we live! Jesus waits for us in the Blessed Sacrament but we don’t leave Him there! As St Therese of Lisieux wrote, ‘Our Lord does not come from heaven every day to stay in a golden ciborium. He comes to find another heaven, the heaven of our soul in which he loves to dwell.’ At the end of Mass, having repented of our sins, having listened to God’s word, having offered the Holy Sacrifice and having received Christ in Holy Communion – at the end of Mass, having done all this, we are sent out to live what we have celebrated.

If you think about it, this becomes the rhythm of our lives as Catholics. We come to Mass, we are sent out; we come to Mass, we are sent out. This repeats itself day-by-day, week-by-week, Sunday-by-Sunday. We come to Mass, we are sent out. According to an English Dominican priest, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, this is, if you like, the breathing of the Church. He writes:

The history of salvation is the story of God’s breath filling and emptying our lungs. God breathed into the lungs of Adam; Christ emptied his breath on the cross, and the risen Lord breathed into the lungs of the disciples on Easter morning. We are gathered around the altar for Communion and sent out, God filling and emptying the lungs of the Church. Some of us are more easily drawn inwards, looking for community and a place in which to belong. Others are more touched by the urgency of mission, sometimes ompatient with the small world of the Church, and are impelled outwards…[T]his rhythm of gathering the community round the altar and then sending it away belongs to the oxygenation of the Church’s life-blood. Without it, the Church would stop breathing and die.

So, what do we do once we have been sent out? We are called to live Eucharistically. We have the gift of celebrating the Eucharist, we have the beautiful practice of Eucharistic adoration and then we have our daily call to live Eucharistically. We could think of the church of St Francis as the beating heart of this large parish. Here we come to be nourished and strengthened by word and sacrament. But the muscles and limbs of the parish are all of you, who having received Christ in Holy Communion go out to be Christs in your homes and workplaces.

In his reflections on this subject, the great St Augustine imagined the Eucharistic Lord saying to him:

I am the food of grown men; grow, and you shall feed upon me; nor shall you change, like the food of your flesh, into yourself, but you shall be changed into me.

There’s a saying that ‘we are what we eat’. If our diet consists of chocolate and cola then that’s not good news! Food, whether it’s healthy or full of calories and additives, is digested and becomes part of us. But the Eucharist works differently. It is not changed into us; rather it is we who are mysteriously transformed by it. We receive the body of Christ to become the body of Christ. We receive the Christ of Sacrifice and become sacrificial persons.

At the Last Supper, the Lord gave us a wonderful example of Eucharistic living. As we’ve already seen, He didn’t just break the bread and give the cup; He also washed the feet of His disciples. If we are to be other Christs then we are called to offer ourselves for others, to serve them, to put ourselves last, to seek the glory of God in all things. As Mother Teresa said:

The Holy Hour before the Eucharist should lead us to a “holy hour” with the poor, with those who will never be a human success and whose only consolation is Jesus. Our Eucharist is incomplete if it does not make us love and serve the poor.

An hour in the presence of the Eucharistic Lord should inspire us to spend another holy hour serving our neighbour. That way, the Mass not only puts us in communion with Jesus but also with each other. As Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical,

union with Christ [in the Eucharist] is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Jesus Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus towards unity with all Christians.3

The Mass is a great leveller. Look at any congregation – people from different countries and cultures, from different classes and backgrounds, with different professions and qualifications, holding different political opinions, supporting different football teams, professing different spiritual traditions and different preferences as to how exactly the Mass should be celebrated. The Eucharist unifies all this diversity. The Eucharist breaks down divisions. The Eucharist gathers together those who would not normally meet. The Eucharist proclaims one Faith, one Baptism, one Faith, one Lord. It’s no wonder that governments over the years have seen the Mass as dangerous, that priests were put in prison simply for saying Mass, because the Eucharist is deeply radical, its turns conventions upside down, it goes against our selfish culture, it calls us to serve our brothers and sisters.

So, the Eucharist is at the heart of our Catholic lives. As we reflect on the mysteries of Maundy Thursday, we try to take on three important lessons:  The Eucharist is a mystery that we celebrate! We come to Mass not because we have to but because it is the ‘source and summit’ of our Christian lives, because through the Mass we are standing at the foot of the Cross and at the entrance to the Empty Tomb, because through the Eucharist we plug ourselves into the mysteries of our redemption. We don’t go as passive spectators; no, we participate on a deep level and offer ourselves to God along with the bread and wine, asking that our sins be cleansed and that we be transformed.  The Eucharist is a mystery that we adore! Jesus is truly there, body, blood, soul and divinity! Our attitude to receiving Holy Communion should not be conditioned by a fast food mentality but rather by an awareness of being at the

3 Deus Caritas Est #14 heavenly banquet, whereby we are given the graces and nourishment we need for the coming week.  The Eucharist is a mystery that we live! It’s not something abstract but decides the rhythm of our life – the Church breathes by gathering her children in around the altar and then sending them out! We are called to live Eucharistically, to live the Mass. Having received the body of Christ we become the body of Christ. The washing of the feet at the Last Supper serves as our model – time with the Eucharistic Lord inspires us to serve our brothers and sisters.

O Sacrament most holy…

Devotional Response:

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament

27th February 2013

Good Friday: Jesus’ Cross and My Cross

Gospel Reading: John 19: 17- 30 (from the Good Friday Gospel)

Good Friday is indeed a very solemn day – a day of fasting and abstinence, a day of penance and sorrow, a day marked without the celebration of the Eucharist – which seem surprising since the Mass makes present the very mystery that we commemorate on Good Friday (Christ’s crucifixion). Surely a Mass would be most appropriate on Good Friday? One explanation of this was provided by St Thomas Aquinas – at Mass, he argued, the sacrifice of the cross is truly represented but, at the end of the day, it is just a figure (using the symbols of bread and wine) rather than the reality itself. On Good Friday it seems more fitting to go directly to the mystery of the cross without this sacramental representation. And so we have the Solemn Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday afternoon with its long Passion Gospel and the dramatic unveiling of the cross, followed by our veneration of it.

Good Friday is also a day for making the Stations of the Cross. A definite highlight of my recent trip to the Holy Land was praying the Stations of the Cross, not simply round a church (as we normally do) but actually through the streets of Jerusalem, as we took it in turns to carry a large wooden cross. At times it was carried by four of us, other times (because of the narrowness of the street) it was just one person.

As with most of our experiences in the Holy Land, it was a case of the ideal meeting reality. Most of our impressions of that road to Calvary are pretty sentimental - you know the sort of thing, a quiet, peaceful, clean setting with Jesus, dressed in an immaculately white and unbloody robe, nobly carrying His cross through the respective crowd. But the human dynamic of the real Via Dolorosa was very different. The streets certainly look different and all the houses date from later centuries, although tradition records details of, say, the exact spot where Mary encountered her Son. There is even a rough hand-shaped imprint in the wall at one station where Jesus is said to have laid His hand for support. Yes, the scenery has changed but the crowds remain the same. Some were interested, taking photos, smiling in sympathy, standing aside to let us pass. Some were utterly indifferent - one guy even walked past us while we were praying at one station as he shouted down his mobile. And some were aggressive - calling us names, giving us nasty looks, even poking us or trying to trip us up. The procession was far from serene, as our little group mingled with the noisy crowds. And I thought: so it must have been as Christ carried the cross through the bustling streets.

On that first Good Friday Jesus was marched to the place of execution, outside the city walls. The city that had opened wide the gates to Him on Palm Sunday now flung them shut in His face. The cross that He carried was not the whole cross, as is often depicted, but the horizontal beam to which his arms were bound. This was quite enough because the beam was thick and heavy, and Jesus was already weak after the mental anguish in Gethsemane, the brutal scourging and the crowning with sharp thorns.

Indeed, the Romans were afraid that Jesus would not make it and asked a man in the crowd to help Jesus carry His great burden. And so Simon of Cyrene enters history. We know very little about him, but he seems to have been a Greek-speaking Jew from Cyrene, in North Africa, who had travelled to Jerusalem for the Passover. It is not known whether he was chosen randomly or because he had shown sympathy with Jesus, but according to the visions of Blessed Anna Catherina Emmerich, a German nun who lived 200 years ago, Simon of Cyrene was

much annoyed, and expressed the greatest vexation at being obliged to walk with a man in so deplorable a condition of dirt and misery; but Jesus wept, and cast such a mild and heavenly look upon him that he was touched, and instead of continuing to show reluctance, helped Him to rise, while the executioners fastened one arm to the cross on his shoulders, and he walked behind Our Lord, thus relieving Him in great measure…Simon had not carried the cross after Jesus any length of time before he felt his heart deeply touched by grace.

St Mark identifies Simon as the ‘father of Alexander and Rufus’ (Mk 15:21). In the Stations of the Cross in my church they are even depicted with haloes, saints from the early Christian community. Perhaps Simon himself was a follower of Jesus or came to believe in Christ while carrying the Cross. As Blessed John Paul II wrote,

from being forced, he freely accepted, as though deeply touched by the words: “Whoever does not carry his cross with me is not worthy of me.” By his carrying of the Cross, Simon was brought to the knowledge of the gospel of the Cross. Since then, this gospel has spoken to many, countless Cyreneans, called in the course of history to carry the cross with Jesus.

I’ve never understood why this brave man is not honoured as ‘St’ Simon of Cyrene. He is an important figure because he represents each one of us. We are all Cyreneans. As members of the Mystical Body, we are all called to help Jesus carry His Cross, our Cross. There are times in our life when we are plucked out of the crowd and given an intimate share in Christ’s saving work.

The cross or crucifix is the great sign of Christianity. But we don’t just wear it round our necks as an ornament. I remember in my first parish, in a fairly poor area of London, I was returning home from the station one night. It was already dark. I took a short cut down a side street, full of residential houses, and there in front of me was a group of teenagers, all wearing hoods and listening to rap music. It was the sort of group which in THAT part of London you were advised to avoid. I tried to ignore them but one of them saw me and shouted ‘Oy, Father’. I thought I was in trouble - would I be mugged or knifed? ‘Oy, Father, come over here.’ I did so rather nervously. He then pointed to something round his neck ‘Oy Father, can you bless my Rosary beads’. Then I saw that some of them were wearing rosaries as a fashion accessory - it was then the thing to do, imitating several famous footballers.

The cross might be fashionable. Depictions of it may be very beautiful. But for us the cross is real. The one sure sign that we belong to Christ is that we carry the cross with Him: ‘Anyone who does not carry his Cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’

The saints all bear the imprint of the cross. Most obviously, we think of the martyrs. But one doesn’t need to be a martyr (in the strict sense) to carry the cross. Who, for example, can forget the final sermon of John Paul II - preached not with words but by patiently bearing suffering and death? I first saw him when he visited England in 1982 - a vigorous, athletic figure, full of energy, even though he had been shot the previous year. The next time I saw him was in 1997, when I went to seminary in Rome. His body was bent, his face expressionless, his words slurred. We all thought that there would be a new Pope by the year 2000. Instead, he bore the cross of Parkinson’s Disease for fifteen years and continued his ministry in spite of great physical limitations. We now know that he experienced his own ‘dark night of the soul’ and wondered on a number of occasions whether he should resign, as his successor would. In his funeral homily, the then Cardinal Ratzinger said:

None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi… The Pope suffered and loved in communion with Christ, and that is why the message of his suffering and his silence proved so eloquent and so fruitful.

Pope John Paul was deeply influenced by the life and teachings of the great Carmelite mystic, St John of the Cross, who truly lived the title he bore. The saint was imprisoned twice – not by the State but by his own Carmelite brethren on account of his controversial reforms. The second time he was verbally abused and kept for nine months in a tiny dark cell, measuring six feet by ten - he called it ‘the belly of the whale.’ His diet was bread, water and sardines, and in the winter the skin on his toes came off from frostbite. He had to undergo the so-called ‘circular discipline’ - each of the eighty members of the community took in turns in lashing his back. He lived the Beatitudes – He was poor, hungry, sad and despised but definitely blessed. You could see the image of the Crucified in John - that was his great gift. And it was during this period of captivity that John wrote one of his most beautiful poems, which scholars believe to be unsurpassed in the Spanish language: My Beloved is like the mountains. Like the lonely valleys full of woods The strange islands The rivers with their sound The whisper of the lovely air!

His body was in the depths of the dungeon, but his spirit soared.

We don’t just follow and revere Jesus. At Baptism, we are marked with the sign of the cross and we participate in His life and death. We suffer with Him. This gives suffering a special dignity - it is our participation in the Passion and it constitutes a path of sanctification. It is not as if the passion of Christ was insufficient for the redemption of the world; rather, our sufferings, if borne out of love, are an extension of Christ’s once-and-for-all Passion, just as the Eucharist is the sacramental extension or renewal of Christ’s Sacrifice. That way suffering can be turned into something quite wonderful.

Just before coming here, I was in touch with a friend who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He is an Amercican living in London, who turned his back on his career and now works as an international evangelist. A few weeks ago he wrote on his website:

The suffering is intensifying daily but I am thanking God for it. I know that seems a strange statement but as the pain becomes intense I have found that when I go deeply into my heart and call Our Lord and offer Him that suffering for those who do not know or reject Our Father, that pain becomes different. It still exists but it is happening on the outside. On the inside, there is a wonderful closeness and presence of God that is so reassuring, so loving that I have never felt anything like it before. I simply thank God for this time in my life regardless of the outcome as I feel I have the opportunity of a form of purification that I could never have found in any other way. Such an approach demands great faith and courage. It doesn’t take away the pain but transforms it and unites it to Christ’s own Passion.

Let’s be quite clear: suffering is not good in itself. We should not seek it out artificially. The false impression made by some writers and the lives of some saints is that we must go and find crosses to carry, that life should be made as difficult and uncomfortable as possible! Think of the Desert Fathers, who went into the wilderness to find God in the first centuries of the Church and imposed great penances on themselves - lack of sleep and food, detachment from material things, even living on top of pillars. Think of the Dominican mystic, St Rose of Lima, who regularly fasted between Thursday evening and Sunday, and slept for two hours each night, her bed being made up of bare boards littered with stones and broken crockery. Her most ingenious penance was the crown of thirty-three sharp nails she wore underneath her veil and garland of roses. Such austerities were, at best, a special charism that need not be repeated. Although the Christian life demands penance and mortification, we need not invent extraordinary ways of finding them.

No, crosses will come our way without them being sought out, and our great test is to accept them with generosity. This doesn’t mean that we should be passive in the face of suffering. If we are ill, we should see a doctor and take medication. If we are depressed or anxious, we should get help and advice. If we see injustice, we should do something about it rather than simply accept it ‘for the love of God’. It is our duty to resist suffering and evil whenever possible. But there will be times when nothing can be done to avoid the cross - losing a job, facing injustice, relationship break-up, the diagnosis of a serious illness, bereavement - and it is then that we are asked to take up our cross and bravely follow the Lord. We all face heavy crosses. But the lighter crosses can be just as burdensome - an insult, an unfair criticism, an argument, the reappearance of an old wound, an on-going headache, even a computer not working properly. These are part and parcel of everyday human life. It’s funny how they often come at the worst possible moment! And they really hurt.

St Therese’s ‘Little Way’ is all about living with these irritations and disappointments. She found the greatest sacrifice in the smallest cross. This might involve smiling at somebody she could not stand or going against her natural desire by using a chipped water jug. It might mean a daily cross, like the damp cold of Lisieux - ‘throughout my religious life’, she later said, ‘the cold has caused me more physical pain than anything else’. It might mean being patient with a Sister who rattled her rosary or tapped her fingernails against her teeth during the hour of community silent prayer or who splashed her with dirty water in the laundry. The saint not only bore these small crosses but embraced them, exposing herself to them without a shudder. When faced with the nun rattling her rosary beads, St Therese not only stopped herself from making any bitter remarks but actually focused all her attention on the offending sound which so racked her nerves that she was sometimes covered in perspiration!

There is also spiritual suffering - dryness, desolation, loneliness, the dark night of the soul, in which we share Christ’s forsakenness on the cross. St Therese experienced this ‘dark night’ during her final illness. ‘Complete aridity,’ she wrote, ‘- desolation, almost - was my lot.’

The acceptance of our way of the cross is classically portrayed as a choice between two roads. One is broad, gentle and attractive, lined with trees, taverns and places of great beauty. Many go along this path amid much music and laughter, craving for pleasure and terrified at any thought of suffering or sacrifice. The road, however, leads ultimately to separation from God and slavery to sin and the ego. The other path is less immediately attractive. It is narrow and steep, and the traveller has to beat down the undergrowth, tread on thorns and climb over boulders (rather like the disciples climbing up Mount Tabor to witness the transfiguration). But at the end of this path - closer than might be expected - is a garden of great delight, eternal happiness, Heaven.

When I was learning New Testament Greek in seminary I became very discouraged, especially when I failed my first exam. I was used to doing well in my studies so this came as a great blow to my academic pride. I was reluctant to put the effort in to learn the words and declensions; I couldn’t see the point and thought there were much more important things to learn about. The wise teacher, who was an American Benedictine monk, used to repeat to us time and time again:

No cross, no Crown. No pain, no gain.

There will be times when suffering seems unfair or harsh. Perhaps it comes at the wrong moment or we feel unable to cope. Accepting the cross at these times will take courage and a strong faith.

After my father died in 2009, I found a little volume of handwritten prayers which he used. Here is one of them, which as far as I can tell he wrote himself:

Jesus, my Lord, I accept now, willingly and in retrospect, all that I have found so hard to endure: the loneliness and isolation of so much of my life, its sadness and difficulties and disappointments. I accept all these and offer them up to you in reparation for my own sins and the sins of all the world, for the good of the Church, as my minute share in the sacrifice of Calvary, my tiny fragment of cross. I will no longer ask “why”. I accept what I did not understand. I will not be so vain as to seek to comprehend all the events of my life…

My father was right. Sometimes you just have to accept the cross and not ask ‘why’. St John Vianney, the patron of priests, taught that ‘our greatest cross is the fear of the cross’:

On the Way of the Cross, you see, my children, only the first step is painful…Most men turn their backs upon crosses, and fly before them. The more they run, the more the cross pursues them, the more it strikes and crushes them with burdens…He who goes to meet the cross, goes in the opposite direction to crosses; he meets them, perhaps, but he is pleased to meet them; he loves them; he carries them courageously. They unite him to Our Lord; they purify him; they detach him from this world; they remove all obstacles from his heart; they help him to pass through life, as a bridge helps us to pass over water.

So, as we carry our cross with Jesus, we have two role models to choose from: the Bad Thief, who carried the cross, yes, and was crucified but was angry towards God and resentful, or the Good Thief, likewise crucified but full of trust in Jesus and who accepted his suffering with grace. As Jesus carried His Cross through the crowded streets of Jerusalem and beyond the city walls, all must have seemed hopeless. Despite the pain, despite the blood, God knew what He was doing. Behind the cross lies the promise of resurrection.

Devotional Response:

The Stations of the Cross

A Catholic writer that I discovered recently is Caryll Houselander. I’d be surprised if anybody here has heard of her. She was English and died sixty years ago. She wrote many books, full of poetic imagery and psychological insight, based on her life experience. A talented artist, she lived the life of a recluse but had a wide circle of friends. She was not the typical sort of spiritual writer - a chain- smoker, with a quirky sense of humour, she had been heartbroken from a youthful love affair with Sidney Reilly, a British spy who served as the model for James Bond - so she was, in a sense, the original Bond girl!

One of her central themes comes out in her meditations on Christ’s passion. ‘The Stations of the Cross,’ she wrote, ‘are not given to us only to remind us of the historical Passion of Christ, but to show us what is happening now, and happening to each one of us.’ Good Friday is not simply that Christ redeemed us through the Cross and Resurrection, vital though that is, but because of our baptism, because we are members of His Body, Christ lives through us, Christ suffers in us, Christ carries the cross again with us and leads us to eternal life.

Each of us is unique but there are two experiences that we all share - one is love, the other is death. As Houselander wrote:

Each [person] meets himself on the Via Crucis, which is the road through death to life. In Christ he finds the meaning of his own suffering, the power of his own capacity for love. He finds the explanation of himself in Our Lady, the Mother of Christ. And in those others too, who are taking part in the Passion of the Son of Man [like Simon of Cyrene and Veronica]...Yes, in the Stations of the Cross, he who has the eye of faith sees the story of Christ’s historical Passion - his own individual Passion goes on through time; the way of the Cross which, though it leads to the tomb and the dark sleep of death, leads on beyond it to the waking morning of resurrection and the everlasting springtime of life.

The Stations of the Cross are not simply a sorrowful devotion for Lent, not just a reminder that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to die for us. We are all on the Way of the Cross. When we make the Stations in Lent, either privately or in public, we can ask ourselves: what station am I at currently in my life? It is a way of life and a way of love. Inspired by Caryll Houselander’s insight, let’s once again make that journey along the different Stations, thinking of Christ’s original journey and our one too:

1) Jesus is condemned to death Behold the Man!’ Ecce homo. Behold the Son of God who has put on our humanity, who has put you on and me on. There isn’t much sign of His Divinity at this moment - covered in wounds from the scourging, wearing a crown of thorns, bound like a dangerous criminal. Behold the Man - but behold in Him yourself. We can see our sins in all the disfigurement and the ugliness. We can see in Him all victims of injustice and mockery; all those whose suffering and death baffles and scandalizes us. Jesus condemned to death, let me see you in myself and in my brothers and sisters.

2) Jesus receives His Cross Jesus embraces the Cross on which He will die; the hands of a carpenter, so familiar with the feel of wood, take hold of the heavy beam. It’s not the first time that Jesus has embraced the cross - even lying in the manger He accepted all the hardship, pain and suffering of this world so that He could lift the burden off our shoulders and transform it. He invites us to accept our daily crosses, large or small, with love. Lord, make us patient and realise that even those sufferings which are known only to ourselves and seem to be without purpose or meaning are part of your plan of redemption. Help us to follow the path of love and, in submitting to its burdens, find lasting peace.

3) Jesus falls the first time What has happened to Him? The One who entered Jerusalem like a King, who could raise the dead or still a storm, has now fallen under the weight of the cross. He has fallen under our cross, which can often seem overwhelming. This symbolizes our first serious fall in adult life - caused perhaps by the heaviness of circumstances or the pressures of work or the heart-break of relationships or the strength of sensual temptation. We all remember this fall. It brought us to the ground but gave us self-knowledge. How true it is that we learn from our mistakes. Lord, lift us up so that we can start again, trusting not in ourselves but in you.

4) Jesus meets His Mother Mary sees what no-one else in that noisy crowd sees - the tiny child taking His first unsteady steps and falling on the garden path in Nazareth. Mother and son meet briefly on that Way of the Cross. It was for this Way that she had said ‘yes’ to the Angel Gabriel, it was for this ‘hour’ that she gave the Word her flesh. The cry of Mary on Good Friday stands for the cries of many women, of many parents - those who are separated from their children; those who are saddened by the paths they have taken; those who see them drop away from the Church; those who see their beloved children covered in shame and rejected by society; those who have to face their suffering and death in the prime of their lives. Mary can do nothing. Rather she accepts the supreme gift of His love. They are completely one now as they were when He was in her womb and her heartbeat was the beating of His heart. Help me, Blessed Mother, to see with your eyes, to think with your mind, to accept with your will.

5) Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry His Cross Simon is forced to help Him; he probably grumbles and protests. But we are given an important lesson - no-one is meant to suffer alone. We all need a Simon of Cyrene. We all should act as a Simon of Cyrene to others. By helping others to carry the cross we are helping and loving Christ in them. And we must be ready to carry the burden of anyone whom we meet on our way, even those who don’t seem to deserve it, even when we have far more ‘important’ things to do! Lord, help us see you in our brothers and sisters; help us appreciate with joy that, when we share in your suffering and the sufferings of the world, we become servants of salvation and build up your Body, the Church.

6) Veronica wipes the face of Jesus This holy woman is driven by compassion but it is hard to believe that that face is of the Son of God, that that face shone so brilliantly on Mount Tabor only a few weeks before. Suffering is not sentimental. It is ugly and degrading and we would rather flee away from it. But not Veronica! Lord, take our hearts which shrink from the stark realism of suffering and expand them with the fire of your love. Open them wide and make us truly compassionate, just like Veronica. Imprint your face in us and make it shine forth to others.

7) Jesus falls the second time Veronica has only just cleaned His face but now He is in the dirt and dust of the road once again. This second fall is harder than the first and so it is with us, as we fall in life, bowed down by the burden of our families, our jobs, our worries for the future, our disappointment, our fear. Perhaps we have reached that stage in life where the hopes of our youth have disappeared and we find our daily routine tedious. Perhaps we are only too aware of our personal sins and limitations. Lord, lift us up! Give us your grace!

8) Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem He tells them: ‘It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and for your children.’ The words sound harsh. Jesus accepted the compassion of His Mother and Veronica and Simon of Cyrene but not, it seems, these grieving women. His words, though, are not a rebuke. He reminds us that, as His own Passion approaches its culmination, He will continue to suffer in us through all the ages. Despite the victory of the cross, evil continues to gather strength down the centuries – we see it today just in the news headlines! Yes, the Christ in us will go on being assaulted and attacked. We must weep for ourselves and for our fellows, in whom Christ suffers on, still labouring, stumbling, falling on the Way of the Cross. It is one thing to have a deep devotion to the Jesus we see depicted beautifully in our Stations of the Cross hanging on the walls of our church. But do we shed tears to Christ crucified among us – to the Lord who suffers alone in the ugliness of shame and disgrace, in the outcast, in the shunned and forgotten, in prisoners and the sick, in the unhelped, the uncomforted and the unloved? Grant that, as we carry our cross, we will not be dry wood but living branches in Christ, the true vine, bearing fruit for eternal life.

9) Jesus falls the third time Jesus has nearly reached Calvary. Perhaps now He will show His Divine power? Perhaps now He will prove to the crowds that He is the Son of God? But instead He falls one last time under the weight of the cross. It comes at the worst moment of all – His wounds are torn open, His last ounce of strength is dispelled, it shatters the last remnant of hope. ‘He has saved others, himself he cannot save!’ Christ thus identifies Himself with all those who fall again and again, even after the struggle of a lifetime. He identifies Himself with those seemingly trapped in the prison of habitual sin. Christ is not only present in the lives of the saints, in those who have successfully overcome temptation, but in the broken lives of those who seem to fail again and again but try to change. And so Christ is present in us. Grant us, Lord, the grace to persevere; may we never lose hope because of our falls.

10) Jesus is stripped of His garments The God who took on our humanity is now exposed in His nakedness for everyone to see. Not long ago He was clothed in light on Mount Tabor – and now this scene on Mount Calvary is an ugly contrast. In His shame, Jesus identified Himself with those whose sins are exposed to the world and to their loved ones – the convicted criminal who pays the price of his sin, the adulterer who has been found out, the weak man who is known for what he is, the child whose disgrace is known to the mother whom he wanted to be proud, the false friend who is stripped of all pretence. There on Calvary Christ’s love for the world is shown in its stark nakedness. He has stripped Himself so that we could be clothed in Him. His clothes have been taken away so that we can put Christ on. Lord, clothe us in the light of your grace.

11) Jesus is nailed to the Cross In Gethsemane, Christ was overwhelmed by the anticipation of His suffering and His utter loneliness. On the way to Calvary Christ’s body failed Him at times – He fell and needed assistance from others. But now by His own will He is crucified; by His own will He is nailed to the cross, fastened in such a way that He cannot come down. He stretched out His hands and embraced us; He made Himself one with all those who would also fasten themselves to the cross of suffering. Yes, we know only too well that our bodies might sometimes resist it but by an act of will the cross is freely accepted. When we suffer, do we do so with love or with bitterness? When we meet the cross do we run away or do we embrace it, seeing it as ‘the ladder to heaven’? Do we see the challenges of life as tragedies or blessings in disguise? Lord, give us the strength to bind ourselves irrevocably to the Law of your Love.

12) Jesus dies on the Cross On the Cross Jesus looks back on His journey to Calvary which is an image of the road through life of all those who follow Him. He has known those things which every Christian must experience too – pain, exhaustion, apparent failure, shame but also compassion, assistance and love. Now He comes to that moment which we too must one day face: the hour of our death. Most of us are too weak, too sinful, too attached to this life and too much unaware of the other world to long for God as the saints do. The thought of death is terrifying for most of us and yet death is the passport to eternity and happiness, light and warmth. As Christ died he drew all those to Himself who would die His death and enter with Him into the fullness of life. He dies our death and assures us that when our time comes we will not be alone. Lord, despite our human weakness, help us not to be afraid of death, whenever it comes. You have led the way to Heaven and we hope to follow you into your Kingdom. Into your hands I commend my spirit.

13) Jesus is taken down from the Cross They took down His body and laid it once again in His Mother’s arms. Mary must have thought of His birth at Bethlehem. Now, on Calvary, there is a second birth. Mankind is born again. Thanks to the mystery of the Cross, Christ would be with us until the end of time. Thanks to our baptism, our faith, our sacramental life, Christ lives in us, suffers in us, transforms us. And as Mary cradled her Son she embraced us too, for she is our Mother. O Blessed Virgin, just as you received your Son’s body, receive us to whom He has given His life; keep us close to you!

14) Jesus is laid in the Tomb And now they lay Jesus in the Tomb. Mary must have thought of the cave in which Jesus had been born in Bethlehem all those years ago – a place that did not even belong to them. And now He is laid in a borrowed tomb, near the site of the crucifixion. Just as He was visited by the wise men bearing gifts, so now Nicodemus comes with myrrh and aloes, to prepare the body for burial. It was over, or it seemed to be, at least. Yet, with hindsight, that night was so pregnant with life, so full of mercy and eternal love, so full of meaning and purpose. The burial seemed to be the end but actually it was the beginning. Christ would rise from the dead, like the lifeless grain of wheat which rises from the earth, putting forth its stalk, then its ear. The new life of the Resurrection would produce abundant fruit for every age and for all eternity.

Good Friday is a day of mourning and desolation but a day tinged with quiet joy because…

God came to earth so that we could go to Heaven. God became human so that we could become divine. The Son of God became a slave so that we could be set free. Jesus was hated so that we could learn to love. Christ was rejected by men so that we could be accepted by God. Jesus forgave so that we would forgive. Jesus was condemned so that we could be declared innocent. He was arrested so that we could be bailed out. Jesus was sold so that we could be bought back and redeemed. Jesus suffered so that we could be healed. He took on the cross so that Satan’s insidious designs for us could be crossed out. The Lord had His side opened so that our hearts could be opened to God. Christ took on Hell itself so that we could gain Paradise. The sky went dark and the sun hid so that we could see Him as the only light we really need. The earth quaked so that we could be at peace. Jesus died so that we could live for ever. The Lord accepted the bad and because of that we call this Friday ‘good.’ 28th February 2013

Easter Sunday: What difference does the Resurrection make?

Gospel Reading: John 20: 1-9 (Gospel for Easter Sunday)

Today, then, we move on in our reflections to Easter Sunday - the Feast of Feasts, the culmination of our Lenten observances, the most important day of the year for Christians. Thank God that Easter is a day that is still very much ‘ours’ – still a Christian day and, although the chocolate eggs appear in the shops almost as soon as the new year begins, it hasn’t been commercialized and cheapened in the same way as Christmas.

Easter makes me think of the two most sacred cities in the Christian world: Rome and Jerusalem.

Rome – because the faithful from all over the world flock to the Eternal City to be with the Holy Father for the dramatic Easter Vigil and then the morning Mass on St Peter’s Square, where he greets the world in different languages and gives the Urbi et Orbi blessing. When I lived in Rome at the English College, we had the privilege of singing at this morning Mass – a tradition going back many years. We sat on the top steps of St Peter’s, with the papal altar in front of us and beyond that the great mass of humanity, the thousands of pilgrims. Despite being exhausted from the Holy Week ceremonies, we had to get there early in the morning and sit in the sun waiting for the Mass to begin. When the Pope (John Paul II) appeared there was a huge cheer – a cry of victory, almost, on that Easter morning.

Tonight we especially think of Pope Benedict as he leaves his office as Successor of St Peter. In fact, this historic moment happened a few hours ago – we are now officially sede vacante, without a pope! It’s time to thank God for this gentle and wise Shepherd, especially for his wonderful, clear teaching and his example of personal holiness. Although we have lost him as our Holy Father, we know that he will continue to serve the Lord and the Church through his prayer and writing. We have been so fortunate in our Supreme Pontiffs over the last century and we now pray that the Holy Spirit will descend upon the Church, especially on the Cardinal Electors. May the best candidate be chosen who, with the help of God’s grace, will lead the Church forward. It’s amazing to think that in a month’s time a new Pope will be celebrating that Easter Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square. May the Universal Church have a share in the Resurrection!

Easter is closely associated with Rome. But, of course, the Resurrection happened in Jerusalem, just outside the city walls. When I visited Jerusalem I went, as quickly as I could, to the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Christ’s Tomb. If Easter is the central mystery of our Faith, then the Holy Sepulchre is surely the holiest place on earth. Just as in Rome the Pope celebrates a Mass watched by millions, so in Jerusalem vast crowds gather to watch another famous Easter ceremony. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch enters Christ’s tomb alone, having taken off his sumptuous vestments. Before doing this, he is checked by the authorities that he is not carrying the means of making fire. The Patriarch holds a bundle of thin candles, thirty-three of them (representing Christ’s human life) and asks that they be lit by the power of the resurrection. There is much rejoicing in the darkened church when he emerges from the tomb and as the light spreads around the excited congregation, who by now almost resemble a crowd of delirious football supporters – as noisy as the crowds in Rome. The Holy Sepulchre is the holiest place on earth, as I said, and yet it continues to surprise and even scandalize us. The keys of the church are in the hands of a Muslim since the Christians can’t agree about who should own them. If I sometimes look a bit annoyed during Mass in my parish because of a particularly disruptive child, well, that’s nothing compared to the distractions of this church - the noise of the pilgrims, the irreverence of the tourists, the simultaneous celebration of different liturgies, the behaviour of some of the clerics. But I think all this reminds us of a very important truth.

This church contains the tomb of Christ. In any other religion or cult, this would have massive significance. You would expect mountains of flowers and tears being shed by distraught followers. But you see no flowers and not many tears. In fact, people seem quite joyful. This is because the tomb is empty. An amazing thing happened here two thousand years. The empty tomb points us to the Resurrection but Christ is not here. If we want to meet Jesus, we don’t need to go to His Tomb. We find Him in the Mass, in the Sacraments, in the Church, in our lives, where He promised always to be. Yes, it is right for us to come to this holy spot. It is a high point in any pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But the reason we visit the tomb of Christ is precisely because His body is no longer there. And perhaps the reason why the basilica is so noisy and chaotic rather than full of awe and silence is precisely because the tomb is empty!

Easter is the feast of feasts. And yet it is strangely neglected. Easter doesn’t quite have the same place in our hearts and imaginations as Christmas. When we think of the Paschal Mystery it is easier to think of the crucifixion than the resurrection. There are more paintings in art galleries of the Man of Sorrows than the Risen Christ. Why is this? Birth and death, Christmas and Good Friday – these are the natural rhythms of life. We can all relate to these. We can all picture them. We all have some experience here. But Resurrection? This is something so radically new, so beyond our experience, that we find it hard to comprehend. Even the disciples who knew Jesus so well did not recognise the Risen Christ at first – St Mary Magdalen even mistook her Beloved for a gardener! What does the Resurrection mean? What difference does it make?

Traditionally, we talk about the Resurrection on three different levels. The first is a symbolic one. Over here the weather seems pretty constant – it’s either hot or extremely hot – but in England there is much more variation and at the time of Easter nature awakens from her winter slumber and comes back to life again. The mornings get lighter, the spring flowers appear everywhere and birdsong fills the air. It’s almost as if the natural world is like a huge cathedral, proclaiming everywhere: Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The second level – and the most obvious one - is the historical Resurrection of Christ, which we read about in the Gospels. The Resurrection is the bright side. The Resurrection is the good news. The Resurrection is at the heart of our Faith. St Paul put it very succinctly: if Christ has not been raised then our Faith is all in vain.

Let’s be clear about what the Resurrection doesn’t involve. Firstly, the Resurrection is not a myth. It’s not a fairy tale or another version of the age-old story of the hero who dies and then returns. This is clear from the Gospel text. There are details that seem to have been vividly remembered by those who were there – like the fact that Peter and John ran to the tomb, the younger John running faster. It was the sort of thing that stuck in the memory. Moreover, the story contains details that are actually quite unhelpful and surely wouldn’t have been deliberately ‘invented’. No one actually saw the moment of the Resurrection; it was hidden in the mystery of the night. The witnesses were those who discovered the tomb empty the following morning and then encountered the Risen Lord. And the first of these witnesses were humble women, who would not have been able to submit testimony in a first century law court. Surely if it was all made up then the disciples would have depicted themselves discovering the empty tomb – but, as we know, while the women went to lovingly anoint Christ’s body, the men were huddled together, hiding in the upper room, wondering if they would be next. Finally, the witnesses of the Risen Christ were prepared to proclaim the amazing truth of the resurrection around the world, even to suffer death for it. Let’s remember that Galilean fishermen were practical, realistic men, who were unlikely to be taken in by some fairy tale. What could make St Peter leave his beloved home and spread the message of Jesus far and wide, ending up being crucified at the very centre of the Roman Empire? What could make this fisherman, who had denied His Master at the crucial moment and had shut himself in the Upper Room because he was so afraid, now run through the streets proclaiming that Christ was risen? This was no myth, no fable. The Resurrection really happened.

The Resurrection doesn’t mean that in some vague, symbolic sense the work of Jesus continued in His disciples, that the cause went on. When people gather for a funeral they will undoubtedly talk about the deceased, tell stories and share memories, and perhaps it feels sometimes as if the dead person is with them. Well, if that’s all the Resurrection means, we might as well give up! Any great figure can inspire a following, a fan club that continues his or her name after death. There are so many societies that do exactly this – a nostalgic remembering of the famous, a safeguarding of their legacy, a fan club, whether it be William Shakespeare or Elvis Presley. That’s not what happened to Jesus’ disciples as they hid in the upper room. The Resurrection is more than a living on in memory!

Nor is the Risen Christ some kind of ghost. We all like a good ghost story, including the people of Jesus’ time, but they can be rather frightening and unnerving. The Jesus whose wounds were touched by doubting Thomas was not a ghost! Finally, the Risen Christ is not a resuscitated corpse – like Lazarus, the daughter of Jairus and all those people Jesus rose from the dead in the Gospels. These, of course, were great miracles. But Lazarus and all the others came back to this life. Lazarus emerged from the tomb still wearing grave clothes. He still belonged to death. He would one day have to die again.

No, the Resurrection is something completely new. When you look at many of the Easter hymns, they are full of military language. ‘Alleluia, sing to Jesus, his the sceptre, his the throne, alleluia, his the triumph, his the victory alone.’ ‘Battle is o’er, hell’s armies flee: raise we the cry of victory.’ ‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son, endless is the victory thou o’er death hast won.’ Easter is Victory Day; Jesus came into this world as a warrior to do battle with those things that prevent us from being fully alive. He came into our sinful world as a man, like us in everything but sin. He was like a soldier in disguise, creeping behind enemy lines and facing the foe at close quarters. He fought hatred, sickness, pride, exclusion, intolerance and violence. He went into all the dark corners of the world – he even went into the lair of the final enemy, the thing we fear the most: death itself.

Jesus rises from the dead and is given new life. Yes, He’s in the same body and, yes, it’s the same Jesus Christ crucified. But it is a Jesus who has undone death; He has gone beyond death. He’s left his grave clothes behind (unlike Lazarus) and has been transformed and lifted up. The victory of the risen Christ is our victory too! The light of the Resurrection enters our world, our lives. Because of it, everything changes. The powers of darkness have been overcome and we can look death straight in the face. ‘O death, where is your sting?’, asked St Paul, ‘O grave, where is your victory?’ (1 Cor 15).

On this day when we prayer in gratitude for our out-going Holy Father, we recall that Pope Benedict has preached some beautiful Easter sermons over the last eight years. In one of these he said: ‘if we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, [the Resurrection] is the greatest “mutation”, absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order.’ Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, human life had been evolving in the wrong direction – sin had been spiralling out of control, the prophets had been ignored, the devil seemed to have the upper hand. The Resurrection was that critical mutation, allowing us to return to the Father.

Perhaps it’s appropriate, then, that the events of the first Easter were associated with an earthquake. An earthquake shakes and upturns the ground, which is something we rely on and take utterly for granted. The Resurrection, like a violent earthquake, shook up our reality and led us into something new.

Pope Benedict has used another image drawn from science. ‘The Resurrection was like an explosion of light, an explosion of love’. The Universe was created by God, perhaps by means of a Big Bang. The first reading at the Easter Vigil is all about the creation of the world. That is the beginning of the story of our salvation that culminates with Easter. At the Resurrection, you could say, there is a Big Bang in the spiritual dimension, with reverberations affecting all of us.

And that begs the question: what difference does Christ’s resurrection make?

* * *

In the words of Pope Benedict, the Resurrection was an evolutionary leap and an explosion of Divine Light. A new form of life was inaugurated, a new dimension of creation opened up. Perhaps sometimes we think of the Resurrection as an event that happened 2,000 years ago. Perhaps we think of it like some decisive event in the past that doesn’t really affect me directly, like some historical battle. But no – just as we can relate to Good Friday in a very intimate way, because I carry the cross with Jesus, so Easter is part of my Christian life too, because we have risen with Jesus! The explosion of the Resurrection resonates in each one of us.

Firstly, the Resurrection means that the Risen Christ lives in me. And this all starts with our Baptism, a sacrament particularly associated with Easter. During our recent trip to the Holy Land I had the opportunity of stepping into the River Jordan, where Jesus was baptised, and leading the pilgrims in a renewal of baptismal vows. It was a moving moment, marred only by one distraction. The River Jordan was full of catfish, with facial ‘whiskers’ that made them look very menacing. Out in the depths you could clearly see some very large specimens but in the shallows, where we were huddled, ‘baby’ catfish darted around, nibbling our feet and creating a strange tickling sensation. Thus, the renewal of our vows was interspersed with the screams of some of the pilgrims. I wonder whether Our Lord also encountered these creatures at His Baptism, as the Heavens opened and the voice of the Father was heard. And how strangely appropriate to have these ‘monsters of the deep’ present because in the muddy waters of the Jordan, Jesus allowed Himself to stand alongside sinners. In the muddy waters He took on our brokenness, descended to our level and lifted us up to new life. The Jordan anticipated the Resurrection and the baptismal waters continue to triumph over darkness and evil. I love the custom that used to be observed in a church in the west of England: one of the side doors was called ‘the Devil’s door’ and this was only opened during the baptism ceremony so that the devil could leave. In baptism light triumphs over darkness; in baptism Christ comes to us as the victor!

As the Pope beautifully said in his Easter sermon five years ago:

In Baptism, the Lord enters your life through the door of your heart. We no longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another. He passes through all these doors. This is the reality of Baptism: he, the Risen One, comes; he comes to you and joins his life with yours, drawing you into the open fire of his love. You become one, one with him, and thus one among yourselves

Yes, because we are baptised we are never separated from one another. When we come to Mass, for example, we stand united with all the baptised (including our loved ones) in other countries, whether it be England, India or the Philippines. Geographical distances mean nothing when it comes to the unity of our Faith. And even historical distances cannot separate us. Last month I had the privilege of preaching in our local medieval church, dating back to the fourteenth century, now in the hands of the Church of England. It made me think of all those who had worshipped there over the last 700 years – each walking similar paths to us, struggling with the same problems, though in a different setting. I could almost imagine them sitting there with us, an invisible presence, though they have left behind the odd monument or inscription. We know we are not alone as we follow Christ! In Baptism we are joined to each other and grafted onto the Risen Christ and receive His new life in our souls.

Let us be aware of our amazing baptismal dignity! St Leo the Great once said: ‘Christian, remember your dignity…Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by bad conduct, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.’ Thanks to the gift of baptism the Risen Christ lives in us. Let us allow Him to use us as His hands and feet, His eyes and ears, His voice, His loving heart. Fellow Christians, remember your dignity…

The Resurrection means that we can be people of joy amid the sorrows of life. Easter is full of joy, a real contrast to the sombreness of Good Friday and the emptiness of Holy Saturday. Light has triumphed over darkness. The cross of death has blossomed into the crown of Resurrection. In the past, there were many ways of making sure that Easter was a day of celebration and hilarity. In southern Germany, for example, the priest told funny stories at the end of Mass so that the congregation would be full of ‘Easter laughter.’ In Russia church belfries were left open so that anyone could wander in and ring the bells to celebrate the Resurrection. In many parts of Europe Easter was a day of sport - even abbots and bishops would play handball, the ball representing the sun that was said to jump three times in rising on Easter morning.

You can imagine the joy of the disciples when they realised that Jesus had not succombed to the empire of death. I had a little insight into their emotions in October 2011 when my mother was rushed to hospital with a serious stroke. I heard about it just before celebrating the wedding of a university friend – it was one of the hardest things I’ve done as a priest, trying to be joyful for my friends sake while panicing inside about my mother and how she was doing in hospital! After two days in hospital she had a further complication and was moved to Intensive Care. I received a phone call that morning saying that I should come to the hospital as soon as possible. There I found my mother lying unconscious and I sat by her bed helplessly, watching the wonderful Indian nurse look after her. The doctors were not very hopeful of her prospects and I went home feeling rather depressed, thinking that she would probably not last another day. I even began talking to one close friend about her funeral. I went into the hospital the following day, thinking this would be the final day, thinking that my mother would still be lying in a coma, breathing with the help of a machine. I was like the women who went mournfully to Christ’s tomb to anoint the body of their beloved Master. I walked into the ward and pushed away the curtain and do you know what I saw? – there was my mother sitting up in bed with a huge smile on her face! She was not out of the woods by any means and remained in hospital a few more months. She still cannot speak due to the cruel effects of her stroke and remains paralysed on one side. But the point is that (in her own way) she had risen indeed, alleluia! Hope had triumphed over adversity, life over death. And I jumped with Easter joy!

It has been said that ‘joy is the most infallible sign of God’s presence’. According to G. K. Chesterton, the famous English Catholic writer, a sense of humour is linked to an appreciation of reality, of truth. ‘Honesty always laughs,’ he wrote, ‘because things are so laughable’. Of course life is a serious business and we cannot simply shrug off important matters with a smirk or a laugh, but, on the other hand, to take everything seriously is to make everything into an idol.’ Chesterton thought that a common theme in comedy is ‘the paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.’ Comedians are always observing the ridiculous side of human existence. We think we’re in control but we’re not. We intend to do one thing but the opposite happens. Humans can be pretty ridiculous - and if we have a sense of the ridiculous in the things around us and, crucially, in ourselves then we are acknowledging that these things are not the centre of the universe, that (in most cases) the matters that consume so much of our time are passing away. Why can the angels fly?, asked Chesterton. Because they take themselves so lightly.

If only that joy was the ordinary characteristic of Christians. Of course, it should be, but we often seem miserable and stuck-up. ‘If the world saw our happiness,’ wrote one saint, ‘it would, out of sheer envy, invade our churches, houses and retreats, and the times of the Fathers of the Church would return when the solitudes were more populous than the cities’.

Of course, the joy that we aim for is not an empty, external joy. And it’s not a feeling – which is why we can be joyful even when we are feeling miserable or are seriously ill. The gift of joy is, rather, ‘a deep, silent, hidden peace, which the world sees not’; for the Christian, it is ‘the grace of God within him, it is the presence of the Eternal Comforter in which he joys’; it is the optimism that Faith gives.

We may not feel particularly joyful at Easter, our long weeks of Lenten preparation may seem a failure, but something is happening on a much deeper level. We all have crosses to carry, as we saw yesterday. Easter does not take these crosses away but it helps us face up to them, it gives us hope, it lessens the burden. At Easter we proclaim that behind every cross is the bright promise of resurrection; that even when life itself seems meaningless or mundane, we have been promised eternal life.

The Resurrection means that we can forgive our enemies. Why were the disciples so terrified of the Risen Lord? Was it because their faith was so weak, that they could not believe what was happening in front of their eyes? Or was it because they knew only too well that they had deserted their Master in His hour of need, that He had been imprisoned, tried, tortured and crucified, and now He was back – surely He was going to be just a little bit angry? Surely He was going to seek His revenge? This is what many gods and heroes of the ancient world would have been expected to do. Seek vengeance, show the betrayers exactly who was in charge. Jesus saw the fear on His disciples’ faces. He read their hearts. Before they even had a chance to run away, He said: ‘Peace be with you!’ – a greeting that is repeated at every Mass. He showed them His wounds in His hands, His feet, His side, as if to say – ‘Look what you did to me, your sins, your weakness, your lack of faith – but despite all that, I say to you: peace be with you!’

So many people find forgiveness problematic. It’s one of the hardest things we are called to do as Christians. And yet we are called to forgive even those who have hurt us the most – though not for the reason that Oscar Wilde once elucidated: ‘always forgive your enemies,’ he wrote, ‘nothing annoys them so much.’ Forgiveness is often misunderstood. It’s not the same thing, first of all, as forgetfulness. ‘Forgive and forget’, the popular expression goes, but actually that’s bad advice. If someone hurts us badly then we can’t force ourselves to forget all about it and act as if it hasn’t happened. Actually, the more we try to forget, the more we think about it! ‘Forgive and remember’ is perhaps more realistic; forgive and remember, for we can never truly forget - past hurts can come back to us decades later! Forgive and remember, providing we remember not with bitterness and anger but with a desire for reconciliation and a realisation of God’s mercy. Jesus did not forget His Passion. He bore the wounds on His body for all to see but transformed them with love.

Forgiveness is not a feeling. Forgiving somebody doesn’t mean that the hurt goes away. ‘I forgive you’ is not a magical formula that immediately leads to spiritual ecstasy! In fact, forgiveness is an act of the will, it means being willing to ask for the gift of forgiveness, to pray for the person who has injured us, to wish him well and not seek revenge. When St Faustina confided to the Lord that she sometimes felt ill of others and lacked forgiveness, Christ told her: ‘It is not always within your power to control your feelings. You will recognize that you have love if, after having experienced annoyance and contradiction, you do not lose your peace, but pray for those who have made you suffer and wish them well.’ We may not feel like forgiving but a large part of forgiveness is making that decision to forgive and praying for the strength to do so, even if we don’t cdompletely succeed.

Forgiveness does not mean, either, that everyone is going to live happily ever after. We may forgive someone but sometimes we cannot return to the situation before we were hurt, sometimes it is best to accept the turn of events, break off an old friendship and start again. Finally, remember the Our Father. Most of us will say this prayer on a daily basis – at Mass or in the Rosary. ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ we say, ‘as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ Yes, it’s hard to forgive others but surely no-one here can claim that they have never hurt another person, that right at this moment there is someone who is struggling to forgive me, even if I’m not aware of it! Let’s get real. Let’s be ready to forgive because we need forgiveness ourselves. Let’s forgive others because God forgives me. If we find it hard to forgive, then go to confession and realise our need for mercy ourselves!

Confession helps us forgive ourselves – for I am often the hardest person to forgive! God forgives me so I should let go, accept my vulnerability and start again. This is the first great gift of the Resurrection. Forgiveness. Peace.

The Resurrection means that we can look death in the face. Death is generally forgotten, even denied in our society. In the past death was often very public – the curtains in the house were drawn, the church bell tolled, the priest came with the sacraments and family, friends and neighbours surrounded the death bed. Christians would even read books about dying well and prayers offered to St Joseph for ‘a good death’. Today death is hidden, made anonymous in the hospice or hospital and without much in the way of public ritual – it is quite possible in this day and age not to be aware that a neighbour has died until several weeks after the event.

No matter how strong our faith, most of us are troubled by the thought of dying – especially the uncertainty of the moment and the suffering that normally accompanies it. A large proportion of us are, to some extent, thanatophobic, afraid of death. Death is not easy – in fact the survival instinct is built into our human nature and this, in a way, points towards our immortality. We are not souls trapped in the body, longing for escape; no, human beings are embodied souls and it is no surprise that the (temporary) separation of body and soul is such a traumatic rupture. Even Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with the thought of death in the Garden of Gethsemane. Even the martyrs, who are so often portrayed as going to their deaths apparently without a care in the world, had to fight all sorts of interior battles to face that supreme moment. And we all have experience of death, viewed from the outside – of loved ones and friends who struggled with aggressive diseases, sudden strokes and heart-breaking dementia. The pains of death are a consequence of original sin.

The Resurrection does not take away this fear of death but it opens up another vista. Death is not the end but rather a beginning. It is not the final darkness but an encounter with the light. The Resurrection allows us to look death in the face and not let fear overcome us. It encourages us to live fully now. Mark Twain famously said that ‘the fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.’ We should not be afraid of the future or live in the past but rather concentrate on today, whatever it may bring. Indeed, the dying often see things in a new light. They live for the moment and are filled with wonder at God’s creation. In 1994 the English playwright Dennis Potter was interviewed just before he died of cancer. He said:

We’re the one animal that knows that we’re going to die, and yet we carry on paying our mortgages, doing our jobs, moving about, behaving as though there’s eternity in a sense, and we tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense. It is, and it is now only…The only thing you know for sure is the present tense. That nowness becomes so vivid to me now, that in a perverse sort of way, I’m almost serene, I can celebrate life. Below my window, for example, the blossom is out in full. It’s a plum tree. It looks like apple blossom, but it’s white. And instead of saying, ‘Oh, that’s nice blossom, looking at it through the window when I’m writing, it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomiest blossom that there ever could be.4

4http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/arts/dennis-potter-s-last-interview-on-nowness-and-his- According to St Irenaeus, the glory of God is man fully alive. The hope of eternal life given us by the Resurrection should make us live every moment as a gift and face death with confidence and even detachment. When Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed so tragically in a car crash, Cardinal Basil Hume, who was then the leader of English and Welsh Catholics, reflected on death before a tearful nation. He said:

We ask why, why?...Death is a formidable foe until we learn to make it a friend. Death is to be feared if we do not learn to welcome it. Death is the ultimate absurdity if we do not see it as fulfilment. Death haunts us when viewed as a journey into nothingness rather than a pilgrimage to a place where true happiness is to be found…Faith admits us into death’s secrets. Death is not the end of the road, but a gateway to a better place. It is in this place that our noblest aspirations will be realised. It is here that we will understand how our experiences of goodness, love, beauty and joy are realities which exist perfectly in God. It is in heaven that we shall rest in him and our hearts will be restless until they rest in God.5 At the beginning of the Easter Vigil, the priest announces that ‘on this most sacred night…our Lord Jesus Christ passed over from death to life.’ This is our new Passover as Christians. This is the night when Jesus, the Lamb of God, passed from the tomb to be with us again, He passed over from slavery, sin and death to freedom, mercy and salvation.

It’s interesting that the two great feasts of the Christian year are both celebrated at night – the Midnight Mass at Christmas and the Easter Vigil. Both are festivals of light coming into the darkness and the pre-eminent symbol of Easter is the Paschal Candle, which stands for the Risen Christ and becomes ‘a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light’. We sing its praises in the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet, one of the high points of the liturgical year, a beautiful poem going back to the work.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm 5 Hume, The Mystery opf the Cross, pp72-73 time of St Ambrose.You remember how the candle is first lit from the fire and how the single flame enters the church, as the priest or deacon sings Lumen Christi! Light of Christ!

The light of the Paschal Candle makes us think of the creation, when God said ‘Let there be light.’ Pope Benedict took up this theme at Easter last year:

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.

How appropriate, then, that the Easter Candle remains in our midst for the whole Easter Season. How fitting that it is used at every baptism, when we are given a personal share in the Resurrection and when our baptismal candles are lit from the light that symbolises Christ. How wonderful that the Paschal Candle also stands beside the coffin at a funeral, commending that person’s soul beyond the finality of death into the promise of eternity.

Easter is inseparable from Good Friday and so the Paschal Candle, the eminent Easter symbol, is inseparable from the Cross. The candle has five grains of incense which are inserted as the fire was blessed – these form the shape of cross and stand for Christ’s precious wounds. Moreover, as the Holy Father pointed out

This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives himself and so bestows the great light.

As we watch the candle consuming itself, as we watch the wax dripping all over the stand during the Easter Season and the candle getting smaller and smaller as the weeks go by, we think of Christ’s sacrifice that triumphed over death.

At Easter, we don’t just celebrate the historical resurrection of Christ, 2,000 years ago, and we’re not simply elated by nature’s spring time, which proclaims this resurrection all around us (as if Mother Nature was one big cathedral). No, the grace of the Resurrection is entrusted to the Church. The life of the Risen Jesus and the life of His Bride, the Church, are one and the same. It’s no coincidence that Easter is a time when the sacraments of initiation are celebrated, when men and women die with the Lord in the waters of baptism and are raised to the new life of Resurrection. It’s no accident that once we enter the Easter Season the weekday lectionary focuses on the Acts of the Apostles, which tells the story of the early years of the Church. The life of the Risen Christ flows through His members. He is the living vine; we, nourished by the sacraments, by our relationship with Christ, by our life of faith, are the fruit-bearing branches. Yes:

The Resurrection means that the Risen Christ lives in me. Alleluia! The Resurrection means that we can be people of joy amid the sorrows of life. Alleluia! The Resurrection means that we can forgive our enemies. Alleluia! The Resurrection means that we can look death in the face. Alleluia!

Devotional Response:

Renewal of Baptismal Vows

Let us renew our baptismal promises (the response is ‘I do’):

V. Do you reject Satan? R. I do. V. And all his works? R. I do. V. And all his empty promises? R. I do. V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth? R. I do.

V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father? R. I do.

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting? R. I do.

V. God, the all-powerful Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and forgiven all our sins. May he also keep us faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ for ever and ever. R. Amen.

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