Arise from the Dead!

"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead."

These words come from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday read as part of the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday morning.  This beautiful homily that comes from some great unknown preacher pierces with the sword of truth, weaving out in poetic language the Paschal Mystery we celebrate, demanding a response from our own hearts.

It also seems to demand my response as a writer.  I might speak to it in a thousand different ways so rich is it in content, but I will give you one of them for what it is worth.

If you wish first to read the homily, or to read it after you have read my own poor words, you can find it here.


Although I emphasized the reading's use for Holy Saturday, it provides fitting fodder for meditation at any time, perhaps especially in our celebration of Easter when our fallen nature prevents us from delving fully into the Paschal Mystery.  We base our faith on the fact that Christ has risen from the dead, but do we understand what that means?  Certainly we understand suffering.  We understand at least the reality of death.  We understand life.  But how can we understand that which transcends even life?

So often we lie dead within.  We need Christ to descend into the depths of our own hell and to call to us to arise from sleep.

"I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld.  Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead.  Arise, O man, work of My hands, arise, you who were fashioned in My image.  Rise, let us go hence; for you in Me and I in you, together we are one undivided person."

Not only does He call us to life and to life in Him, but He makes us one with Him.  The eternal King, the Creator of the universe, our God who is existence itself invites us to union.

"But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven."

Although He speaks to Adam specifically, He also speaks to us as descendants of Adam, promising us a joy above that of the Garden of Eden which we, in our fallen state, often lament having been lost.  It is not enough for Him simply to give us the good that we lost, but He must give us a greater good.  Rather than restore us to the Eden, He will bring us to Heaven where we may see Him face to face.

These words apply equally to our struggle through this pilgrimage of life.  We look back at good times in our lives lost, seeing an angel with a flaming sword guarding us from returning to that which we desire, and we lament.  We sink down with deadened hearts.

Yet Christ calls to us to arise and go forward, not to lament that which lies behind, but to go forward toward that which is yet to be.  Always when He takes away that which we hold dear, He offers us a greater good, even if He calls us to walk through the shadow of death for a while before we glimpse it appear before us like the rising sun.

Let Us Become Like Palms and Olive Branches

Chanting the Liturgy of the Hours must be the most beautiful way to enter into Holy Week.  I am much grateful for that gift Luke is sharing with our parish.  Because of it, I found myself reflecting on the second reading in today's Office of Readings which comes from a sermon by Saint Andrew of Crete.  Its words struck deeply into my heart, reflecting there some thoughts stirring there of late.  I want to share some of them with you:

"Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives.  Today He returns from Bethany and proceeds of His own free will toward His holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation."

What a beautiful phrase: to consummate the mystery of our salvation of His own free will.  Yes, His own free will.

Sometimes perhaps we forget—or merely do not understand—how willingly He goes into the suffering of His passion. It is easier to think that He did it because He had to do it. For who could possibly choose to suffer so much pain by His own free will? Who would choose to embrace the Cross? Surely only the One who loves more deeply than we can understand—who loves more deeply than we can bear.

How then do we respond?

"Let us run to accompany Him as He hastens toward Jerusalem, and imitate those who met Him then, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before Him by being humble and by trying to live as He would wish.  Then we shall be able to receive the Word at His coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

"In His humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and He is glad that He became so humble for our sake...."

Humility.

It is the foundation of all the virtues, the foundation of freedom, and the foundation of joy.  Yet somehow it is the most difficult of the virtues to embrace in more than mind's intellectual assent.

Why?

I think it is because we fear our own vulnerability—our own woundedness.  We try in every way possible to shore ourselves up lest we fall crashing to the ground, lest we become a hopeless mess, lest we do what we would never wish....

Vulnerability.  It is a word that has haunted me whatever path I have taken: it drew me to theatre, to charismatic prayer, to friendship, to psychology, and again to prayer....

Yet still the word looms like an insurmountable tower, its gates impregnable against my weak-willed assault.  I gaze at it like a puzzle, wondering how to unlock it.  Yet in truth I am made ungainly by my own weighty mail with all its interwoven rings of steel, my own walls of protection stacked stone upon stone over the years, and cannot grasp with my armored claws something so soft and simple and small.

Of course we need our gates and walls to keep out the evils of the world.  The problem is mainly that we forget to let down the drawbridge when the King comes knocking, especially because He comes without fine array, riding on a donkey.

"So let us spread before His feet not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in His grace, or rather, clothed completely in Him.  We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before Him."

When we admit our own vulnerability—that we are naked before Him—then we know that we must be clothed in His grace and in His very self.  That humility allows us to throw ourselves before Him to tread upon as He enters the heavenly Jerusalem in glory where one day—after our own journey to Calvary—He will raise us up to reign with Him and to enjoy our own resurrection.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!

Why Don't We See More Miracles?

Perhaps sometimes as we hear of Christ giving sight to the blind, healing the lepers, and even raising the dead, we wonder why He rarely works such miracles today.  More often, though, we merely accept that miracles are a thing of the past and not of the present.  By our own lack of faith we confirm their absence from our lives.

Take a moment to ask yourself this question: do you really want to see miracles in your life?

It might seem easy to answer yes right away, but if so then I would dare to say that it may arise from a failure to understand the demands that a miracle makes upon you.  For a miracle requires metanoia—conversion of mind—conversion of heart.

In a talk my friend Josh gave a while back, he spoke directly to this reality: "Miracles happen when God tells us what to do and we do it."

If we deeply examine our own hearts and minds we may find the opposite reality existing: we want to tell God what to do and have Him do it.  That is the miracle we hope for.  We want to see the sufferings in our lives—or in the lives of those we love—removed.  We want to rejoice in the glory of the healing power of the Divine Physician right now.  We want to be restored to the fullness of life that we may live more abundantly as has been promised.  We want to be fully alive because we feel so far from it.

Yet those good desires leading us to Christ often drag along with them a reluctance to give up whatever is keeping us from union with Him.  We end up clinging to patterns that prevent us from receiving the grace He wishes to give us.  Merciful God that He is, He allows that.  He never takes away the suffering we see as evil when it saves us from worse evil or gives us a crutch to rely upon in our own brokenness that we are not yet ready to give up.

Moving out of that brokenness means letting go of our own victimhood.  However, as my friend Joseph reminded me recently, so few are willing to do that.  Whether we realize it or not, we often like to see ourselves as the injured party.  It's a safe place to be.  For who can fault the victim?

Instinctively we know that if we remain as victims before the face of a cruel world we can't blame ourselves for our fate.  Where we have failed again and again, we can become martyrs of circumstance  and therefore save ourselves from the heavy burden of guilt.  When everything seems against us and we want to hide in our beds, we can assure ourselves that after all it isn't our fault and that if God had wanted us to do more He could have made it possible.

It is far harder to embrace all the failures and sufferings as part of our reality without accepting also the crushing condemnation that certainly is not of God.  For to do so means to stand vulnerable as Christ did before Pilate—silent and without defense.

Yet think of what Christ said finally in answer to Pilate's questioning:

"You would have no power over me if it were not given you from above."

Nothing has power over us except by the will of our Heavenly Father.  Nothing can harm us against His most loving will.

Yet just as Job wrestled with his sufferings, as everything he held dear was taken away from him, we too wrestle with our own pain, the worst of which may be our own failure to live up to our own expectations of ourselves or seeing how our brokenness hurts those we love.  In that darkness and confusion, we can rebel against our situation without yet being willing to open ourselves to God's love.  We can fall into self-hatred and despondency, forgetting that the Creator of the Universe rules our lives.

Why should we not see miracles?  Why not expect God to transform our lives radically even where we struggle most?

The only reason I can see is because we go to Him with outlined expectations, limiting Him to the finite box we have prepared for His working, instead of going to Him with open hands and open hearts.  What might happen if we began to listen?  Would we hear God's voice if we let our inner selves fall silent in adoration before Him?

"Miracles happen when God tells us what to do and we do it."