"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." (Matthew 28:6)

Disciples John and Peter on the Way to the Tomb on Easter Morning (Oil on Canvas 1898) by Eugene Burnand

The morning of the third day has brought something utterly incredible, unthinkable, even impossible. Mary Magdalene has returned in haste from the tomb with shocking news - she claims that Jesus, lifeless and entombed since Friday afternoon, HAS RISEN FROM THE DEAD!

Peter and John race towards the tomb. John, the only one of the Twelve who followed Christ to the cross itself. John who watched Jesus die the most agonizing of all deaths. John who knew better than the others that there was no doubt - their beloved Master was truly dead.

Peter, the chief of the apostles. The man who had walked on the tempestuous sea toward Christ. The one whom Jesus had renamed "Rock" and to whom he had promised the keys of the kingdom - the new steward of the royal household who had authority to bind and loose (see Isaiah 22:15-24). Peter who had, in terrible fear, rejected the Lord three times. Peter, to whom Christ had said: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32).

And so they run. John, the younger of the two, runs faster. Peter runs as best he can. John, filled with anticipation: "Could it really be? Please, O Father, let it be so!" Peter, filled with hope but also a deep and painful shame: "Please, Master, please... Please forgive me!"

They finally arrive. John waits for Peter, acknowledging his primacy. Peter enters first. The tomb is empty. The Lord's wrappings lie there, the cloth that had covered his face in another part of the tomb, folded. What grave robbers would have taken time to unwrap his body? What is going on here?

They return with more questions than answers. Little do they realize that he will soon come to them in the very room where they had last eaten with him, and things will never be the same - for them and for the whole human race.

Holy Saturday - Christ descends to save those in Hades

Second reading

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

The Lord descends into hell

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

RESPONSORY

Our shepherd, the source of the water of life, has died. The sun was darkened when he passed away. But now man’s captor is made captive.
– This is the day when our Savior broke through the gates of death.

He has destroyed the barricades of hell, overthrown the sovereignty of the devil.
– This is the day when our Savior broke through the gates of death.

CONCLUDING PRAYER
All-powerful and ever-living God,
your only Son went down among the dead
and rose again in glory.
In your goodness
raise up your faithful people,
buried with him in baptism,
to be one with him
in the eternal life of heaven,
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
– Amen.

"Ecce homo!"

"Behold the man!" Pilate shouts to the crowd who has turned Jesus over to him. This Galilean is clearly innocent. But Pilate fears the rabble - if he refuses to condemn Christ, it will be proclaimed that he, the Roman Governor, is "no friend of Caesar's." If he does condemn him, he fears this man's followers may revolt. Pilate sees this in many respects as a "lose/lose" for him.

The crowd shouts all the louder: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And all the while the prisoner's words keep confounding him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" - John 18:37. Who is this man? Where does he come from? Where is this kingdom of his, the kingdom he claims is "not of this world?"

Pilate has seen something in those eyes that he cannot comprehend - something he ultimately refuses to face. He is too weak to do the right thing... too weak to act justly. This sham trial and wholesale condemnation is something he chooses to step away from rather than settle himself. 

The basin is brought to him. He ceremoniously washes his hands before the mob and says those famous words: "I am innocent of this man's blood, look to it yourselves" (Matthew 27:24). 

Thus he hands the most innocent one of all, the spotless victim, the unblemished Lamb of God over to the slaughter.

"But who do YOU say that I am?"

                          

I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the past few weeks so I wanted to take a few minutes and do some deliberate, meaningful blogging tonight!

When considering what to take a look at, I kept coming back to this whole notion of WHO Jesus really was (and is, for that matter). I'm often struck how so many people who would never adhere to the Christian claims about Christ's divinity are perfectly fine with the notion of Jesus as a "good man" or a "great teacher" - a "great religious figure" and the like.

For me, this notion always seemed weak at best. It is, after all, such an easy position to take; it's also one that neatly avoids digging into the substance of the question by concluding the journey before it ever really begins. In what became known as his famous "trilemma," C.S. Lewis took issue with this common approach to the person of Jesus with these rather blunt words:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

                                                          - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Lewis argued that Christ's claims of divine status, of equality with God, were most clearly evidenced by his claims of authority to forgive sins (see Mark 2:5-7), to have always been in existence ("before Abraham was, I AM," John 8:58) and his promise to return in order to judge (see Matthew 25:31-46).

Now, all of this begs the question, doesn't it? What "good" or "morally upright" teacher/religious figure who was merely a man would ever claim these things? Unless of course he was absolutely stark-raving mad. We see examples throughout the gospels of the outrage expressed by those who heard everything he said and concluded that he was a "very bad man." So too do we see the desire to either shut him up or to get away from him quickly shown by those who thought he was out of his mind. In the end, we see the result of Jesus' words and actions - he was horrifically and brutally executed. I guess the authorities didn't think of him as just a harmless, "nice" and wise teacher.

Why was he executed, then? He was executed precisely because he was claiming to be God. Jesus Christ claimed divine power and authority. Furthermore, and particularly unthinkable to ancient Jews, he applied the Sacred Name to himself. This was truly the point of no return.

So now, 2,000 years later, we look at the question. Was Jesus guilty of the gravest of all blasphemies or not? If not a deliberate villain was he perhaps just terribly deluded? Or was (and is) he precisely who he said he was? What's it going to be? Liar, Lunatic or LORD???

"Neither do I condemn you..."

“Let the one among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her.”

                                                              John 8:7

 

This is always a tough one for many people, myself very much included.  It seems to me that in the depths of our souls we still hear the echo of the call for true justice.  Somewhere in the core of our being there is a sense that the world is not as it was meant to be and that human beings ought to be something better than they are.  This is good in essence.

 

The problem arises out of our tainted and fallen human nature.  Being so firmly rooted in self-centeredness, we now have a knee-jerk reaction that prompts us to immediately look for all of the faults evident in everyone except ourselves.  We start shouting out for all the world to  hear as we list the sins of others.  We look feverishly for the nearest stone.

 

And then Christ does something amazing.  He slows everything down.  He resists the surging wave of wrath with his peaceful, yet firm and authoritative presence.  And then he asks that question we've pondered for 2,000 years.  But do we take his words to heart, or have we yet to do so?  And how long will we wait before we drop our stones and do a little soul-searching?

Beautiful words...

"The surprising, unforeseeable, 'unjust' mercy, using purely human criteria, of one who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me just the same, appreciates me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, and expects from me. This is why the Christian conception of morality is a revolution; it is not a ‘never falling down’ but an ‘always getting up again.’"                                                        - Pope Francis

HABEMUS PAPAM!!!

He's here!!!  I was doing Army stuff all day so this is my chance to weigh in.  I don't know very much just yet about our new Holy Father, but I am absolutely thrilled that the Holy Spirit guided the cardinals to a relatively swift decision.

I like my brothers and sisters in the faith around the world will watch with eager anticipation as Pope Francis begins his monumental task of guiding the Barque of Peter into the turbulent seas ahead.  May our Blessed Lord Jesus bless and guide the Successor of Peter through all challenges with the help of His divine love and wisdom.  Amen.

Rejecting Jesus

"They rose up, drove him out of the town,

and led him to the brow of the hill on which their

town had been built,  to hurl him down headlong.

But he passed through the midst of them and went away."

                                                             Luke 4:29-30

How do we respond when Jesus confronts us? How often to we try to push him over the nearest cliff when his words cramp our style?

For many decades now, so many have sought to emphasize the love of God while at the same time progressively pushing away any notion that this love makes demands on us.  We want a "Gentle Jesus" who doesn't really care what we do - a God who makes no demands. We want to make God in OUR image. But license is not freedom, and real love requires growth and transformation. If we just stay the way we are, we cut ourselves off from that transformation and we will surely die.

Someone reminded me recently that oftentimes when a tree has died, the remaining sap within it continues to enable some leaves to grow. Though passers-by may see the leaves and think the tree is just fine, the reality is that the tree is dead.

May we have the courage to hear Our Lord's words to us and amend our lives, giving him all the room in our hearts that he wants so that he can nourish us with what we need to truly live.