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.

Flesh to Flesh

In the afterglow of that great solemnity of the Annunciation in which we celebrate the singular most important event in the whole course of history, the Incarnation, it is the flesh that provides food to ponder (no pun intended).  For it is to our mortal flesh that Christ draws our attention by the hypostatic union—God uniting Himself with mankind.

It is so easy to forget what a good thing the flesh is.  However, when God created the world, what He said of it was that it was good.

Yet we experience such suffering in our flesh that we forget its goodness.  Whether we suffer the emotional pain of the loss of someone dear to us, the physical aches of growing old, the daily weariness of our monotonous work, or simply a seemingly source-less depression, we naturally fall back on a response of hope.  We are made to be creatures of hope.  Thus we long for the day when we shall no longer suffer these things.  We may thereby begin to look condescendingly on this mortal coil that keeps us from the glories of heaven, especially if we struggle with the concupiscence of the flesh.

Despite a hatred of the body that can arise subconsciously in a thousand different ways, one startling fact remains: God waits for us physically in the Blessed Sacrament.  We may forget the great privilege of that Presence with us when we cannot see Him face to face as we long to.  Yet so blessed is that Sacrament that the angels envy us for being able to receive It.

God didn't become man so that He could fill the gap between now and heaven.  He became man because He wants to be united with us now, today, through our bodies and His body given up for us upon the cross, but first given to us through the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

Henri Nouwen speaks beautifully of our desire for that meeting of God through our flesh: 

You are looking for ways to meet Jesus.  You are trying to meet him not only in your mind but also in your body.  You seek his affection, and you know that this affection involves his body as well as yours.  He became flesh for you so that you could encounter him in the flesh and receive his love in the flesh.

Somehow I am finding this message come to me in so many different ways lately. Its ubiquity inclines me to consider its importance for a society so pleasure-oriented as ours, for pleasure is focused ultimately on satisfying the needs of the body. Of course no pleasure satisfies. Always we need more. The desire remains and grows for more and more and more and more.... Because the desire is for something deeper. The desire is for God. It is a desire to meet Him in our flesh.

But something remains in you that prevents this meeting, Henri Nouwen continues. Somehow there is always something that keeps us back. We throw up all sorts of walls to avoid that encounter.

Several weeks ago, I went with a friend to an empowering workshop for prayer leaders. The workshop leader demonstrated the power of intercessory prayer by asking someone to come forward who wanted healing. A man came forward who had one leg shorter than the other. As they prayed over him at first nothing happened. Then it was that the leader asked whether there was something that might prevent him from receiving that healing and so they prayed for his intentions for spiritual healing of pride for which he had asked initially. Then—I heard, although I did not see it with my own eyes—his leg became as long as the other.

So often we want healing. We go to doctors wanting to be cured, trying every treatment. Even if we come to the Divine Physician we may not receive the healing we desire. The question is always: why?

I found an answer at that workshop. I can't say that it is always true, but it may very well be so. For we mortal creatures are not mere bodies like cars to be fixed at the mechanic but a complex union of body and soul with the physical and psychological impacting the spiritual and vice versa. Every act has its effect for better or for worse.

There is so much to say on this subject, but I will end with a simple injunction from Nouwen:

Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.

The Best April Fools

For every April Fools' Day joke played successfully this day someone must be full of confusion or annoyance or some similar sentiment.  Imagine then the apostles, who had just undergone the most brutally cruel crashing of their expectations in the death of their Lord only to have Him rise again three days later as if to say, "April Fools.  You thought I was dead and this was the end of all things, but look, now I am alive."

Of course He never said that.  First of all, they had not yet invented this delightful celebration called April Fools Day.  Even if they had, Christ's resurrection would not have fallen on that day.

Still, there is a perennial truth in this year's coinciding of celebrations as much as there was in that of Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday.  It is a truth deeper than we might dare admit.  Sometimes we can grow so comfortable with the darkness and pain and our own grieving that we do not want to admit the light.  It is uncomfortable, just like the prank of April Fools, to find ourselves faced suddenly with the overturning of our expectations.  How can we be demanded suddenly to accept as necessary the most horrific of circumstances?  Yet is that not what the resurrection demands?  For how could there be resurrection without first the crucifixion?

Christ appears like a child, eager in His glory to welcome us into the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom that has dawned through the trampling of death by death.  That child-like love, however, runs up against grieving hearts who had just undergone the most tragic experience of their lives.  How could they be prepared to go from pain to joy?

We too are called to be children.  We are called to let loose our own expectations and rejoice with the reappearance of Him who was dead.

He is alive!

Do those words not strike the mind with more comprehension than to say that He was dead?  For death we all understand.  It comes for all those we love and we know it will come one day for us.  It is, according to folk wisdom, one of the only sure things in life other than taxes.

Yet resurrection?  Of that we have no experience.  How then can we comprehend something so amazing, so heartbreakingly beautiful, so true?

We cannot.

Still, by the power of Christ within us, perhaps we may catch some glimmer of what this awesome mystery portends.  Perhaps He send the Holy Spirit to enlighten our earth-trod minds, to awaken us from the weary monotony of our self-wrought circles of madness, and to breathe in the fresh air of a new joy, a new hope, a new life that might just as well be the April Fools joke.  For to embrace such a mystery seems folly to the world, and even to our mortal minds.

Let us then embrace the folly of this joke that is no mere joke, although it makes the heavens ring with the laughter of joy.  On this day, let us become fools for Him!

Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death,
and on those in the tombs
lavishing life!

The Rising Sun

The other day as I prepared to rise for Mass, I would much have preferred to stay in bed.  Yet I had planned to rise.  Thus by resolute effort of will I shook off the warm covers and slid my feet to the floor, standing a bit shakily as I felt the weakness of my body from insufficient sleep.

Then the window drew my gaze—or rather the sight outside it.  For the sun was just rising, casting glorious golden gleams across the sky and clouds.

That beautiful sight was enough to rouse my heart to joy at being thus awake.  The sky continued glorious as I made my way outside and began the walk so well known and yet now changed with new construction and vanished trees.  My tiredness slipped away as I breathed in the warm, moist air, and I began to feel so alive—so gloriously alive.

Often through my life I have that same experience.  I do not wish to do something—in fact want only to do the opposite—and then I persevere only to experience something glorious like a small gift for my faithfulness. 

There is nothing like the glory of a sunrise.  It always seems like a small glimpse into heaven.  I feel as if this one in particular were prepared just for me to remind me that the Son smiles upon me.  May you find Him smiling upon you as you open your heart to see Him in all the little things as you tread faithfully toward Him!

Divine Providence Wherever I Go

I happened to pick up a breviary and it fell open to this passage from the dialogue on Divine Providence by Saint Catherine of Siena:

Eternal God, eternal Trinity, You have made the blood of Christ so precious through His sharing in Your divine nature. You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for You. But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more. When You fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for Your light. I desire above all to see You, the true light, as You really are.

I have tasted and seen the depth of Your mystery and the beauty of Your creation with the light of my understanding. I have clothed myself with Your likeness and have seen what I shall be. Eternal Father, You have given me a share in Your power and the wisdom that Christ claims as His own, and Your Holy Spirit has given me the desire to love You. You are my Creator, eternal Trinity, and I am Your creature. You have made of me a new creation in the blood of Your Son, and I know that You are moved with love at the beauty of Your creation, for You have enlightened me.

Eternal Trinity, Godhead, mystery deep as the sea, You could give me no greater gift than the gift of Yourself. For You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being. Yes, You are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light and causes me to know Your truth. By this light, reflected as it were in a mirror, I recognise that You are the highest good, one we can neither comprehend nor fathom. And I know that You are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, You gave Yourself to man in the fire of Your love.

You are the garment which covers our nakedness, and in our hunger You are a satisfying food, for You are sweetness and in You there is no taste of bitterness, O triune God!

Although she does not speak of Divine Providence directly in terms we are accustomed to, she speaks more deeply: she speaks to the heart of this mystery, the relationship of God with man.  For of what use is reliance upon a God who does not love and whom we do not love?  God is love and in delving deeper into that relationship of love, we gain trust, and can surrender our hearts to His Divine Providence, which guides all things toward the ultimate goal of perfect love, our union with Him.

Go Gaily in the Dark

“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.”

-The Ballad of the White Horse, by G.K. Chesterton

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Today we celebrate that new awakening, that springtime, that journey beginning once more toward the heavenly Jerusalem.  In the words of Pope Francis:

"Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy."

For all the comforts and pleasures of this world lull us into a sort of sleep and a false security.  Like one who succumbs to anesthesia, we do not realize that we are falling asleep even as we fight it.  Wisely, the Church declares a time for us to rise out of that slumber, to deprive ourselves even of that which we consider necessary for a time in order to raise our eyes to the heavens.

"Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."

Those words shatter our self-assured world of grasping control.  For what can dust achieve of itself?  Nothing.  And all shall return to nothing.

Oh what folly is our seriousness!  Our earnest attempts to make eternal bliss here upon earth last but a little while.  Someday we must face the truth that all here is temporary.  Someday we must face the reality of death.

Yet if we face death now, how lightly we could take ourselves!  We would no longer care so desperately for our plans and schemes.  We would no longer cling to all that we hold dear which will pass away with this earthly life.  We would take such bold risks and dare to love courageously.

"Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."