Holy Saturday

I WAS DEAD

During Holy Week we hardly give ourselves time to allow the reality of Jesus’ death to sink in. We move quickly from Good Friday to the Easter Vigil and there is no liturgical action for Holy Saturday itself. The time between his burial at sundown on Friday and the dawning of resurrection faith early on Sunday morning gets no particular attention.

But Jesus really did die. His life came to an end, he breathed his last and his body was placed in a tomb. I have always found the following verse, from the Book of Revelation, immensely powerful:

I was dead but now I am to live for ever and ever and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld (Revelation 1.19).

Jesus was dead. We believe so strongly, I suppose, that Jesus was not an ordinary human being that his death can seem like no big deal. An early Christian heresy asserted that Jesus did not really die but this is to deny the full human reality of his experience. (Nowadays we prefer to think that nobody really dies, speaking instead of them 'passing away' or 'passing over' but the Christian faith enables us to face death squarely in the face and call it by its name.)

Jesus dwelt in the kingdom of the dead. The earliest creeds speak of this as the ‘descent into hell’. This was not an invention by people who felt Jesus must have been up to something while his body was in the tomb. Belief in the descent into hell is based on New Testament texts which teach that his salvation is of cosmic significance, that ‘in the spirit he went to preach to the spirits in prison’. In the Eastern Church there are no icons of the resurrection which do not include this moment of Christ breaking open the doors of hell in order to lead the dead forth into freedom and life.

As an article of the creed the descent into hell is a mystery of faith and a moment in the paschal mystery. As such it teaches us something about God and about human salvation. It illustrates the lengths to which God is prepared to go to achieve the redemption of the human race. It teaches us that God was prepared to let his Son go into a far and foreign country, to the place of sin and death, to the place which is furthest from God, in order to save whatever could be saved within creation.

Saint Paul says that God made the sinless one into sin so that in him we might become the goodness of God. Jesus Christ, innocent and sinless, entered fully into a human experience marked by all the consequences of sin. He suffered and died. He came to know what alienation from God means. Jesus went to the borders of existence, to a place which is almost, but not quite, the place of non-being. It is as if — and I am stretching language here — God allows himself to be stretched and pulled apart in order to reach the last and least traces of what can be saved.

Jesus’ being among the dead also teaches us that the salvation he won is of cosmic significance. His salvation reaches ‘to the ends of the earth’ and his victory is acknowledged ‘by all beings in the heavens, on earth and under the earth’. The ends of the earth are not only every place and time but every aspect and corner of the human world, every relationship and group, every project and plan, every thought and desire, every darkness and desolation, every experience of emptiness and despair, every joy and delight, every confusion and distress, every disappointment with God or even rejection of Him, every experience of being God-forsaken — all of this is included in ‘the ends of the earth’. Nothing of it is now foreign to Jesus and so none of it falls outside the care of God.

God wants all people to be saved and Jesus, when he is lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to himself. My faith in the paschal mystery of our Lord allows me to hope that all people will be saved and that on the last day hell will be empty. I do not claim to know that it will be so but I hope there is nobody there. My hope is based on the love of God made visible in Jesus Christ, a love more powerful than death, victorious over sin and capable, it seems, of undoing all evil.

An early Christian story says that Jesus entered the place of the dead with his cross, the weapon of his victory. Having released all those who were inside he decided to leave his cross standing in the centre of hell, a sign that even those who pass that way do not find themselves in a place which is unknown to him.

Good Friday

CHRIST OUR CHAMPION 

If we have to contend with temptation, then so had Jesus. In his response to temptation he showed that he is the servant of the Lord, loving God with his whole heart and soul and mind. If we have to contend with powers and principalities that are more than flesh and blood, then so had Jesus. He is the strong man who has driven the demons out and ransacked their houses. He has taken on the prince of devils and disarmed him (Lk 11:22). If we, like Jacob, have to contend with God, ‘wrestling along with God’, then Jesus in Gethsemane and on Calvary has already so contended.

Or is he the one who is not required to contend in this way, with God, because he has come to us from the Father, because he and the Father are one (Jn 10:30)? Jacob called it Peniel, the place where he had seen God face to face. But St John tells us that no one has ever seen God and that it is the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father who has made him known (Jn 1:18). What we have seen, John says, is the glory of the only Son revealed on the cross (Jn 1:14). Because he is the Word of God, the One who knows and has seen, Jesus reveals the Father to us. As the sinless one his struggle is not exactly ours. Not that this removes him from us: rather does it heighten his sensitivity to the effects of sin and evil. 

Jesus is Stripped of his Garments

What glory is there in that shameful death, what beauty to attract us? Humanly speaking the hour seems like defeat for Jesus and victory for the powers ranged against him.  Here is no warrior God arrayed in his panoply, a heavily armoured God to terrify and intimidate. Instead of a mighty warrior smiting and smashing his enemies we see the Son of God powerless and defenceless, like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb and like a lamb led to the slaughter (Is 53:7). He is abandoned and naked, exposed to whatever his enemies choose to do to him.

On that day, says the prophet Amos, the stout of heart among the mighty shall flee naked, a text that Mark may be alluding to when he tells us about a young man who runs off naked at the moment of Jesus’ arrest (Amos 2.16; Mk 14.51). We are told (unnecessarily it seems) that this young man was wearing only a linen cloth. But linen cloths have powerful associations in the scriptures. Half the references to linen in the Bible are found in those chapters of Exodus and Leviticus that describe the clothing of priests. All the references to underclothing in the new Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible are to the linen undergarments worn by priests who are not to come naked into the sanctuary. We are not told that the tunic of Jesus – his undergarment as the Jerusalem Bible translates it – was made of linen but we are told that it was seamless (a reference apparently to the seamless robe of the high priest: Jerusalem Bible, note to Jn 19:23).

Jesus is a priest through the power of an indestructible life and not through physical descent (Heb 7.16). His way was not to stand on his dignity but to empty himself, to take off the robe of his glory, to become a slave who washes the feet of his disciples, to allow himself to be stripped of his garments and nailed to the cross, entering the battle with nothing except his knowledge and love of the Father, entering the sanctuary with nothing except his own blood (Phil 2:6-7; Jn 13:4; Heb 9:12).

It was a naked David who faced Goliath and triumphed. Saul wanted him to wear his armour but David, trying it on, could not move. So he stripped himself of it, took five stones from the river and with just one killed the Philistine champion. Jesus stripped naked and marked with five wounds looks like the defeated one but, just as he has the power the lay down his life, so he has the power to take it up again (Jn 10:18).

The prophet Isaiah, in one of those strange acts required of prophets, walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia (Is 20:2-3). Whether Egypt and Ethiopia were impressed by this threat we are not told but it alerts us to another kind of power. The sword of the Word of God exposes all, judges the secret emotions and thoughts, no created thing can hide from him, everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the one to whom we must give account of ourselves (Heb 4:12-13). Jesus, we are told, did not trust himself to them, never needed evidence about any man and could tell what a man had in him (Jn 2.24-25). He is the Word that penetrates to the heart, that probes the loins.

Our champion, then, is naked, vulnerable and powerless, and yet he prevails. Armed only with his knowledge and love of the Father, Jesus stands against the powers of this world and against the spiritual army of evil in the heavenly places. The campaign of Jesus takes him to crucifixion on Golgotha where he engages directly with the last enemy, death, and appears to suffer defeat. The devil has taken the bait, as some of the Fathers of the Church put it, not realising that hidden within is the double-edged sword, the divine Word, the devil’s undoing because he is the father of lies and Jesus is the Word of truth.

The Anglo-Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood, has the cross of Jesus speak as follows about the one it bears:

The young hero stripped himself – he, God Almighty –

Strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,

Bold before many, when he would loose mankind.

I shook when that Man clasped me. I dared, still, not bow to earth,

Fall to earth’s fields, but had to stand fast.

Rood was I reared. I lifted a mighty King,

Lord of the heavens, dared not to bend.

In the seed that has been sown a new and glorious life is already germinating. So he goes to the spirits in prison to preach to them (1 Pet 3:19). He visits the kingdom of the dead. One of Job’s friends reminded him that Hades and Abaddon had always been naked and uncovered to the sight of God (Job 26;6) but that place is now touched by God’s re-creating power. From among the dead Jesus rises in the glory of the resurrection to be given the name that is above all other names in heaven, on earth or under the earth (Phil 2:9-11).

The love and obedience of Jesus, revealed in his submission to death, are vindicated by his exaltation to the right hand of the Father. The place of abandonment and sorrow has become the place of reconciliation and glory. Jesus, the tested one, comes through (Is 28:16; 48:10; Heb 2:18; 4:15) so that the cross of the Lord has become the tree of life for us. And there is even greater good news in all this because the victory achieved by Christ on our behalf becomes, by his grace, our victory also. ‘Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor 15:57). ‘Those who prove victorious I will allow to share my throne, just as I was victorious myself and took my place with my Father on his throne’ (Rev 3:21). 

Prophet, Priest, King 

If Christ is our champion, our leader and guide in the spiritual struggle, it is in the first place as our great high priest that he is this champion, the priest who is his own sacrificial offering. He is a priest like Melchisedech, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, not through physical descent but by the power of an indestructible life (7:16). Our high priest has gone through to the highest heaven (4:14) and has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking nothing with him but his own blood. By virtue of that one single offering he has won an eternal redemption (9:12) and achieved the eternal perfection of all whom he is sanctifying (10:14).

What makes his priesthood even more a matter of rejoicing for us is that he is one of us. The one who sanctifies and the ones who are sanctified are of the same stock (2:11). It was essential that he should become completely like us so that he could be a compassionate and trustworthy high priest of God’s religion (2:17). We rejoice then that we do not have a high priest incapable of feeling our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way that we are though he is without sin (4:15; 2:18). He is not only an example for us but also a source of grace and mercy reaching to our inner selves and changing our way of living. In offering himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, Christ purifies our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God (9:14). 

He is the leader who takes us to our salvation (2:10) but this leadership meant his identifying with us before we could be identified with him. He, before any of the rest of us, was made perfect through suffering (2:10) and, although he was Son, learnt to obey through suffering (5:9). During his life on earth he offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save him out of death, and he submitted so humbly that his prayer was heard (5:7). The reference is to his agony in Gethsemane, perhaps also to his desolation on the cross. There, above all, he submitted with such reverence, and was so obedient to the Father’s will, that his prayer was heard. The Father’s will was for us to be made holy by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all (10:10). His death takes away all the power of the devil and sets free all who had been held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death (2:14).

It follows that his power to save is utterly certain, since he is living forever to intercede for all who come to God through him (7:25). He is our judge, testing our work (1 Cor 3:13), and this too is great good news. Who else would we want as the judge of our lives? And how can we now fear any spiritual warfare to which we are called when we have such a champion to intercede for us and to stand with us? 

The Armour of Light  

So we are to take our part in a struggle that is already in principle resolved. We have been delivered from the dominion of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col 1:13) and yet we are to complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body the Church (Col 1:24). We are to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light (Rom 13:12). If we are to stand against the wiles of the devil we must put on the whole armour of God (Eph 6:11,13). 

So how do we dress for this battle? What is our protection and weaponry? If we are following Christ and engaged in his battle then we will not put our trust in the impressive regalia of priests or the intimidating armour of soldiers. Ephesians 6 describes as follows the armour in which the Christian must dress for the spiritual warfare: 

… stand your ground, with truth buckled round your waist, and integrity for a breast plate, wearing for shoes on your feet the eagerness to spread the gospel of peace and always carrying the shield of faith so that you can use it to put out the burning arrows of the evil one … accept salvation from God to be your helmet and receive the word of God from the Spirit to use as a sword (Eph 6:14-17; see also 1 Thess 5:8). 

The armour which the Old Testament says is worn by God (Is 11:4-5; 59:16-18; Wis 5:17-23) is worn now also by Christians. The warrior God of the Old Testament has called to his side those who belong to Christ and in the power of their belonging to Christ they become participants in the battle and not just beneficiaries of its outcome. The sword that is the Word of God, alive and active, cutting more finely than any double-edged sword (Heb 4:12), is placed by the Spirit in the hands of the Christian (Eph 6:17). This is not about war in the ordinary sense. These weapons of truth, integrity, eagerness for the gospel, faith, salvation and the Word of God build a spiritual kingdom not an earthly one. The armies of heaven are clothed in fine linen which is the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev 19:8, 14). The work of acquiring these virtues and gifts (insofar as their acquisition is within our control) is considered in the longest section of Scupoli’s Spiritual Combat (chapters 7-43). 

Spirituality False and True 

The grace of Christ lifts us beyond natural spirituality and mysticism to a theological life. It is important to remember that there is a natural level of spirituality and mysticism that is not yet the deepest level on which the Christian lives. In writing about the years immediately preceding the conversion to Christianity of the Emperor Constantine, E.R.Dodds makes a helpful distinction between the daemonic and the divine worlds (Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, chapters 2 and 3). The first is the level on which much contemporary spirituality operates: religious experiences that can be generated from our own resources relating to what is often now called ‘the divine’. In speaking of the human being’s relation to the divine world Dodds means what Christians will refer to as the theological level, that level of ‘experience beneath experience’ where the theological gifts of faith, hope and charity are to be located (1 Cor 13:13).

It is through these gifts (also called theological virtues) that we live already the life of the kingdom Christ has won for us. Through faith and the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, the cosmos is transformed and humanity transfigured. Through hope and prayer the ordinary Christian foot soldier is ready for the long road and can live with courage and perseverance. Through charity and the corporal works of mercy the one who follows Christ is living an ecstatic life, empowered by love to emerge from the shell of his ego to reach out to the neighbour in need.

The spiritual warfare in which we are involved may grow intense at times. Its forms will be myriad and confusing. Recalling the seven deadly sins is enough to remind us of the many ways in which we can be seduced and distracted, of the many fronts on which battle needs to be waged: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. Without Jesus we are naked and defenceless, as he was on the cross, easy meat for the devil, who is going around like a roaring lion looking for someone to eat. More than likely we will be wounded in these struggles, perhaps seriously, but we pray that those wounds will be rendered glorious and that through God’s wonderful providence even our sins will be transformed to become witnesses to His grace.

The cross of the Lord is become the tree of life for us. The word of the cross is folly and scandal to those who do not believe but to those who do believe it is the trophy of victory. In the cross we see the wise strategy and indestructible power of God. This is how Paul puts it in his most famous passage about spiritual warfare:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:35,37-39).

This is Chapter Four of Spiritual Warfare by Vivian Boland OP (Catholic Truth Society, London, 2007)

Holy Thursday: Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper

Readings: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 115; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

Have you ever tried to get a dog to look at the moon? Whatever you do or say the dog is more likely to look at your finger. Dogs don't seem to get it, the difference between the sign that points to something and the thing to which it points.

Human beings do get it. We understand signs and symbols because we know how language works. We know for instance that just re-enacting the ritual of foot washing once a year is not what Jesus intended when he told his disciples to imitate his example. To think we were doing what he asked just by miming this action would be like looking at the finger instead of the moon.

He does, of course, say: 'If I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other's feet.' As I have placed myself completely at your service, you should serve one another with comparable generosity. We call today Maundy Thursday from the Latin 'mandatum', commandment. The commandment in question is that the disciples are to love one another as Jesus has loved them. The foot washing illustrates it, dramatically.

All the many ways in which love serves others are included in what is meant by the washing of feet. For some people it literally involves foot washing -- in hospitals and homes for the elderly it means giving this tender service to the sick and the aged. In accidents and disasters, or in times of war, it may mean washing away not just the dirt and tiredness of the day but mud and blood. It may mean binding and healing wounds, comforting the sorrowful, lending a hand to the over burdened, helping out and being available. There is an infinite number of ways in which we can fulfil this command.

But there is more to be said. Jesus is not just an ethical teacher giving us an example, illustrating his teaching, as it were, with an acted parable. Sometimes people try to reduce the Christian religion to this, the moral teaching of a very good man. We believe him to be a lot more than that and his teaching therefore to have far more radical significance.

During the foot washing Jesus took off his outer garment and he put it on again. Early Christian teachers saw in these simple and necessary actions signs of something mysterious, even earth shattering.

Jesus emptied himself and was exalted. He stepped down and was taken back up. He had come from God and was returning to God. He humbled himself taking the form of a servant. He humbled himself further by dying on the cross. He even translated his love into bread and wine, 'placing himself in the order of signs', as the Welsh poet David Jones puts it. The eternal Word steps down from his seat of glory to wash the feet of creatures he has made.

Peter, as so often, says he does not get it and refuses to have his feet washed. But then you will have nothing in common with me, Jesus tells him. Peter, ever impulsive, says 'okay, then wash my hands and my head as well'.

To have a part in Jesus, to belong to him, to have something in common with him: …this thought leads us to the other symbolic action of the last supper, the one we re-enact every day, the blessing of the bread and the cup. Whenever we eat this bread and drink this cup, St Paul reminds us, we are proclaiming his death. For the bread is a communion with the body of Christ and the cup a communion with his blood.

Our participation in the Eucharist makes it possible for us to love in the way he commands. If he were just an ethical teacher we would have the guidance of his teaching and the inspiration of his example. But he is also our Lord and Master, our Saviour and Redeemer, and so we have much, much more.

Through faith and the sacraments of love he shares his life with us so that we come to live by his Spirit. The love with which he has loved us is now in us so that we may love one another with that selfsame love.

Human pride, for the most part, does not get it. We look at fingers and miss the moon. But human pride is undone by the humility of God. Jesus' way of humility and service finally shows us what love is. In the three-day celebration of his life-giving death and resurrection we are invited to be witnesses of his glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full not only of truth but also of grace.

This homily was first published on Torch, the preaching website of the English Dominican province.

Wednesday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Ps 68; Matthew 26:14-25

As children we called this day 'Spy Wednesday'. This is the day Judas spent looking for Christ, seeking an opportunity to betray him. In a few days time we will hear about Mary Magdalene, also looking for Christ, seeking the one they have taken away.

We like to think of ourselves as people 'looking for Christ', seeking to find and recognise him in the varying circumstances of our lives. Judas and Mary both searched for him. Why are we doing it, then, what is our motive? What do we want to do with him when we find him? Hopefully our motivation is closer to Mary's, it is because we have come to love him, than it is to Judas's, it is because we want to use, even abuse, him somehow.

In the course of our lives we lose Christ from time to time and that is an opportunity for us to reflect on why we seek him in the first place. Where we feel sure we will find him - creation, the Bible, the neighbour, the liturgy, the life and work of the Church, the Eucharist - at times these fill us with a sense of his presence, and at other times they leave us cold. The spiritual life is a series of losses and findings of Christ. This is how the Song of Songs has been described, that great mystical text, like a game of hide-and-seek, that children and lovers like to play, pretending to lose the one we love so as to experience the excitement of finding him again.

In our life of faith it does not always feel like a game. It is played out for real, as we lose and find him again and again. But the purpose of this is that we come to know why we are seeking him. Like the disciples in today's gospel, we are unsure as to whether we are the one who will betray him. Do I seek him because I love him or to re-assure myself about something? Do I seek him because I want simply to be with him or because I want to use him somehow, his life, his teaching, his power, for purposes that are not consistent with his life or his teaching or his power?

The losing and the seeking and the finding will continue until we learn this: it is Christ who is seeking us and all we need is to know how to receive him, to welcome him, to open the door to his knock, to be grateful and joyful in his saving love.

Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 49:1-6; Ps 70; John 13:21-33, 36-38

There is a twofold drama, things happening with meaning at two levels. On one level, the 'human' one, we see how the events of Holy Week affect different characters in the drama and how their own actions cause those events to happen. On another level things are happening 'as it is written', or 'as the scriptures foretold'. What is enacted in these events is not just the political climax of the career of Jesus of Nazareth. Through the messy, unjust, and cruel execution of a good man, things hidden from the foundation of the world are revealed, the mystery of an eternal love that binds the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.

Today, at the human level, we are presented with a contrast between Peter and Judas. Why does one find his way back to repentance and forgiveness and the other, it seems, does not? The difference is that Peter, even in his sinful betrayal and rejection, continues to look to Christ, remembers Christ, whereas Judas cannot now believe in the possibility of forgiveness.

At this level today's readings may be taken as an encouragement to pray that in our sin we will be like Peter rather than Judas, that we will believe always in the possibility of forgiveness, and that we will not fall into despair or give up hope.

What about the other level, on which the eternal and divine mystery is revealed? How can it be that God's will is achieved in spite of human sinfulness? We have to think of God as an artist or composer in whose work for us our shadows and betrayals are somehow integrated. Fulton Sheen spoke about the bum note sounded by an instrument in the orchestra that can never be unplayed. The only solution is for the composer to take this note and make it the first note in a new movement.

Julian of Norwich wrote that sin is 'behovely', a word that means fitting, appropriate, even convenient. Against the darkness which we create, and even within the darkness we create, the light shines more gloriously. For Julian, sin's fittingness comes from the mercy it calls forth - it allows us to see how deep is God's mercy.

Not that sin is no big deal. Are we to sin that grace might abound, Paul asks. Don't be ridiculous, he says (or words to that effect). Are we to sin so that God can show more mercy, Julian asks. Not at all, she says, to ask that question shows that you have not yet understood what sin is.

Or rather it shows that we have not yet understood what love is, and so are unable to understand the burden we have asked Him to carry. It is love that helps us understand what sin is, not the other way round. Love takes us deeper into the mystery of betrayal, making us sensitive to another's pain, giving us an inkling of the wound sin causes. Judas' efforts are exhausted and neither will Peter have the strength he needs. It becomes clear that we can only know what love is (and so what sin means) if we allow ourselves to be taught by Christ, the one whom the Father glorifies in the darkest night of this world.

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Ps 26; John 12:1-11

The first half of Holy Week offers us a three part liturgy of the Word. Each day we read one of Isaiah's 'Songs of the Servant' (the fourth is read at the Good Friday liturgy). The gospel readings these days are centred on Judas and his betrayal, comparing his treatment of Jesus with that of others in their circle, Mary of Bethany (Monday), Peter (Tuesday), and the Eleven (Wednesday). In three scenes, then, this first act of Holy Week presents us with a deepening sense of tragedy, through acts of love, disappointment, doubt, and betrayal.

Mary is on the side of light. She understands - so Jesus says - his way to glory, the kind of Messiah/Servant he is to be. She is ready at least to some extent for the hour of his glorious kingship on the Cross. Judas is increasingly under the power of darkness, failing to understand, and losing a sense of loving Jesus.

Mary's perfume fills the whole house. This seems to be John's way of saying 'wherever the gospel is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of her'. The perfume of her act will accompany the preaching of the gospel everywhere.

The most striking characteristic of her act is its extravagance: it is exaggerated, unnecessary, wasteful (as Judas, with some justice, indicates). But it anticipates the extravagance we will witness in the second half of Holy Week, the extravagance of God's love poured out in the sacrifice of Christ. Mary's extravagant love of Jesus continues to strengthen the faith of believers, for it helps us to appreciate the extravagant love that is the world's salvation.

The requirements of justice are extravagant, as Mary understands. There are many references to justice in the readings today. Sometimes we think of it as cold and blind, strict and merciless. But the justice of which Jesus is the sun is a justice that has reached the heart. It is a matter of words and actions originating in a heart that loves and is merciful. Mary shows her heart today as Jesus' heart will be shown on Friday, the heart of our 'most human God'. He has not forgotten the poor but is remembering them in each step of his via dolorosa. He becomes the poorest one of all, experiencing the most radical poverty of humankind, so that we might become rich from him, anointed with his endless mercy, his constant forgiveness, his everlasting love.

Palm Sunday Year C

Readings:
Luke 19:28-40 (Procession)
Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56 (Mass)

When a loved one dies we treasure our memories of their final days and hours. Different members of the family may well remember different things as the dying person’s last words. My father’s last words for me are not necessarily those cherished by my mother or by other members of the family.

Between them, the four gospels give us seven last words of Christ, things he said from the cross. St Matthew and St Mark record just one word,  ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’. It is a cry of desolation and yet strangely comforting to all who experience that dark spiritual night in which God seems to die. It is also the beginning of Psalm 22, which opens in anguish but closes in trust and hope.

St John records three last words, ‘Woman behold your son’, ‘I thirst’ and ‘It is finished’. St Luke also records three last words and it is on these I want to dwell because it is Luke’s account of the Passion that we read this year.

Luke tells us that Jesus, on the cross, asked his Father to forgive his executioners: ‘Father forgive them; they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23.34). Jesus who had lived among sinners died among sinners. Those who nailed him to the cross, beat him, stripped him, and taunted him were his enemies. They wanted to see him dead. Now he had to practise what he had so powerfully preached, that we should love our enemies, pray for them and forgive them.

Some early manuscripts of the New Testament do not have this verse of Luke’s gospel. It is as if some early Christians feared that Jesus would seem too indulgent towards sinners, too tolerant of their behaviour. But how can he be too forgiving? Had he not taught them that God is a merciful Father whose forgiveness is offered no matter what people have done?

St Paul says: ‘none of the rulers of this age understood … for if they had they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ (1 Corinthians 2.8). Sinners never really know what they are doing. We do not really understand the kind of offence sin is against the love and goodness of God. Perhaps some day it will be revealed to us. Bishop Fulton Sheen wrote that it is our ignorance of how good God is that excuses us for not being saints.

Out of the crowd gathered on Calvary comes a voice in a different tone to the rest, a voice asking for forgiveness. The man we remember as the good thief, crucified alongside Jesus, brings out of him those wonderful words, ‘today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23.43). The thief does not ask for so much. ‘Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom’, is all he says. Perhaps, in the future, it might be possible that I will be saved … this is as far as he dares to hope. ‘Today’, Jesus replies, ‘why not today?’ We may be diffident also, and experience may have led us to be reserved in our hope, but we do already live in this ‘today’ of which Jesus speaks. ‘Now is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation’ (2 Corinthians 6.2).

The only voice to acknowledge Jesus during the whole of his passion is the voice of this good thief. Fulton Sheen says that this man who had lived as a thief died as a thief for he stole Paradise!

Just before his death Jesus cried out with a loud voice: ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ and with these words he breathed his last (Luke 23.46). We find these words in Psalm 31, an ancient Jewish prayer for those suffering and being tested. Jesus speaks once more to the Father but now it is as if he is the prodigal son turning towards home. He is exhausted and spent. He has wasted the Father’s wealth on sinners, pouring out divine mercy and kindness without restraint, without limit, without reserve. He has loved them to the end, foolishly and extravagantly, and it is time for him to return home.

Jesus thus concludes his life of obedience to God’s will. He has drunk the cup the Father asked him to drink (Luke 22.42) and he has finished it to the dregs. In death, as in life, he is nothing but the servant of God.

Good Friday

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Psalm 30, Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9, John 18:1-19:42 

In the face of death we all become mute. We have no words adequate to this reality that goes beyond our personal experience. On Good Friday more than ever we are in this difficulty: faced with the death of the Son of God, what is there to say? How can we speak when the Word itself is dead? 

But we have his words, from the cross, of which the Gospel of John records three, and from these words we can learn something about the meaning of this death, we can have an impression of how Jesus himself experienced and lived his death.

'Woman, behold your son.' 'Woman' is the title that Jesus gave to his mother in the second chapter of the Gospel of John, at the wedding at Cana. And there are many links between the miracle of the water turned into wine and the moment of Jesus' death on the cross. That was the first sign given by Jesus and his death on the cross is his last sign. At the wedding in Cana he revealed his glory to his disciples and on the cross he manifests his glory to the world. At Cana he said that his hour had not yet come. We know that hour of which he spoke is the time of his passion and death, the moment in which he is to pass from this world to the Father. When he says to Mary, 'behold your son', he is saying to her, 'this is what you were asking of me at Cana, to be this bridegroom to Israel, providing the wine of the Holy Spirit'. 'Behold your mother' is then spoken to the Beloved Disciple but considering the first part of this double word it is actually the designation of Mary, the New Eve, as the Mother of the Church, the one to whom the Lord entrusts his disciples in the heart of the Paschal Mystery.

'I thirst.' This is the second word of Jesus from the cross. The miracle at Cana already invites us to think about the deeper thirst, not just that for water or for wine, but the thirst for truth, for love, for justice, perhaps even our thirst for God. Jesus often spoke about a water that he has come to give to us: 'whoever drinks the water I shall give him shall never thirst,' he said to the Samaritan woman. After teaching in the temple he said, 'whoever is thirsty let him come to me and drink ... he who believes in me ... streams of living water will flow from within him.' This he said, John explains, referring to the Spirit. Now, from the cross, Jesus himself says, 'I thirst.' It is the thirst of a dying man, of course, but also the thirst of the Incarnate Word, the thirst of the Eternal Son, his desire for the love of the Father, and so that those whom he loves might participate in that love, in the communion of divine love. When the soldier pierced his side, immediately there came out blood and water. In the moment in which Jesus gives his life, all his power, all his love, his thirst creates a spring of spiritual and supernatural life which is the life of the Church.

'It is finished.' This is the last word of Jesus according to the Gospel of John. Everything is done. The time is fulfilled. The work is done. He remained faithful to the will of the Father, showing the world the glory of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. 'Bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.' It is the moment of his death. He has entered into the darkness of death. The world is once again formless and empty, darkness covers the abyss. But the Spirit given by Jesus hovers over the chaotic waters of our so deeply disturbed world ...

You will find here another reflection for Good Friday

Palm Sunday Year B

READINGS

Procession  -   Mark 11:1-10 / John 12:12-16

Mass  -  Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

Mark’s account of the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus is simple, even austere. It flies along from moment to moment, summarizing the events that took place over a period of twenty-four hours, from the preparation for the Passover to the burial of his body. It provides the schema for the more elaborated accounts we find in the other three gospels. 

Because his account is so succinct, it is even more interesting to consider things that are found only in Mark’s account and are not picked up by the others.

One of these is the use of the term ‘Abba’ in Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. It was accepted for a long time that this Aramaic term was an intimate form of address for a father by his child, something like ‘daddy’ or ‘dad’. More recently scholars have been questioning this interpretation. In any case wherever it occurs in the New Testament it is always in combination with the Greek term for father, pater (here at Mark 14:36 and in Paul’s two uses of it, Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6).

There are many other references to Jesus praying to his father and it may be that Mark wants to stress the intimacy of that relationship in the moment in which it is put to its severest test. The other points at which Aramaic terms are recorded in the gospels all involve strong emotional reactions in Jesus. Paul then teaches us that the relationship Jesus had with the Father is one we are all invited to share. The inability of his disciples to stay with Jesus through the agony in the garden, however, will be familiar to us already from our experiences of trying to remain faithful to his teaching.

Mark’s account of the passion is spread out across the watches of the night. In a number of acts the drama unfolds, between dusk and dawn, moving on then to the other events of Good Friday. The book of Exodus described the night before the crossing of the Red Sea as 'a night of watching by the Lord' (Exodus 12:42) who, like an anxious parent, a vigilant sentry, or a protective guardian, watches over his loved one. That was the original vigil, kept by God, as he watched over his child Israel. Mark’s account of the passion presents us with another night of watching by Abba, Father, who will never abandon his Son, but will raise him up to sit at his right hand in the kingdom of the glory that is coming.

Another incident recorded in Mark and nowhere else involves a young man wearing only a linen cloth that is pulled from him as he escapes, naked, from the garden. Mark offers no explanation, nor does he identify the young man. Linen clothes are associated with the priesthood and with the liturgies of the Temple. We are told that all his disciples abandoned him except this young man who was also following him. Perhaps it is John, the beloved disciple, whom John’s gospel will tell us was at the cross with Mary, the mother of Jesus.

There is a verse in the prophecy of Amos, speaking of God’s judgement on Israel, which says that 'the bravest of warriors will flee naked on that day' (Amos 2:16). 'That day' is the day of the Lord’s judgement of his people. Perhaps this is what we are meant to see in this strange moment recorded by Mark, a fulfillment of this prophecy. It will seem in what follows that Jesus is the one being judged, whereas in reality his trial and execution is the revelation of God’s justice and, by contrast, the condemnation of human injustice.

Perhaps the young man is a heavenly and angelic figure, leaving Jesus for the moment, only to appear later at the tomb. Where the naked Jesus had been wrapped in a linen cloth, a young man now appears clothed in white, telling the women that Jesus is risen from the dead. Perhaps he is a figure marking the transition from the end of Jesus’ earthly life to the beginning of his Risen Life. And in doing so prefiguring the reborn Christian who will descend, naked, to be baptized and rise with Christ to be anointed and wrapped in the white garment of his new dignity.

In spite of its simplicity and its pace there are many points in Mark’s passion narrative which encourage us to stop, and to ponder.

Palm Sunday Year A

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

Crucifixion was a form of execution devised by human beings to get rid of rebels, thieves, murderers and nuisances. The electric chair, the gas chamber, shooting, beheading, stoning, strangling, poisoning, lethal injection: human beings have used their imaginations to invent many ways for the judicial elimination of other human beings.

Crucifixion has a special place because it involved a slow and painful death for the unfortunate person, as well as maximum value as a public display, and therefore as a deterrent to others. The person was stripped, stretched, totally exposed and vulnerable to the blows, insults, spits and ridicule of onlookers.

Because the cross and the crucified Christ have such a secure place among religious symbols, and in our own religious awareness, it may be that they do not any more seem strange, weird, scandalous, or shocking. We can forget that the cross was an instrument of torture and death, that the crucifix represents a dead human body nailed to wooden beams.

Saint Paul very quickly pointed out that the language of the cross is illogical and paradoxical, a sign of God's foolish wisdom and of God's vulnerable power. Christianity is not a morbid religion which is preoccupied with suffering and death. It is a religion whose heart is love. Because the crucified Christ is all about love, his cross is a symbol of hope. His death is the prelude to new life. As the Easter Liturgy puts it, the tree of death on which he died has become the tree of life for us.

The image of the crucified Christ is venerated, as is the wood of the cross, because they represent the way in which salvation came into our world. The cycle of violence and reprisal, the impossibility of forgiveness and reconciliation, the ever-deepening darkness which can lay hold of sensitive and vulnerable spirits, the apparently inevitable cruelty of the world: all of these things are stopped and broken open by the event of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Here is one who does not respond to violence with violence, and who establishes God's kingdom of long-suffering love. By his wounds we are healed. Here is one who intercedes for forgiveness for those who killed him and who, because he is the Son, thereby reconciles the world to the Father. Here is one who has entered the deepest darkness which can afflict human beings. Here is one who does not summon armies to his aid but offers only the gentleness and compassion of loving: an apparently fragile thing, easily disposed of ... yet vindicated and endorsed by the power of God who is love. This is the human face of God, 'an obstacle', 'a madness', says Saint Paul, 'but to those who have been called, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God'.

We already experience something of this power of the crucified Christ in our own human attempts to love, no matter how poor and imperfect. Love always means opening up to the suffering of the one who is loved, sharing it with him or her, becoming vulnerable to suffering and pain which is not our own. The strength to be vulnerable in that way is strength indeed. It is the strength of the Lamb who was slain but who thereby turned history around, who transformed human experience, who is worthy to receive glory and honour and power.  To love is a wise foolishness and a vulnerable power. It is the only atmosphere in which human beings really flourish.

We are called to take up our own cross and to follow this crucified Christ: Try to imitate God and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up in our place as an offering and a sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:1-2).