Easter Monday

Readings: Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16; Matthew 28:8-15

The English Dominican Cornelius Ernst once published an article entitled 'How to See an Angel'. It was partly, he said, because it is a funny title but also in order to speak about what he termed the 'subjective conditions' for talking about angels. We can do something similar in Easter Week, think about 'how to see the Risen Lord'. What are the 'subjective conditions' for such an experience? Or even for talking with an open mind about such an experience?

It is a particular angel that brings this to mind, the one we met in the gospel reading at the Easter Vigil, who appeared at dawn on the first day of the week, was accompanied by an earthquake, rolled back the stone from the entrance to the tomb, and sat on it (Matthew 28:2). Two groups of people saw this angel, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who was with her, and the guards. But the experience of the two groups was quite different.

The women were addressed by the angel who told them that Jesus was risen, that they were to go quickly to tell the disciples this, and that they would all meet in Galilee. The soldiers on the other hand trembled with fear and became like dead men. The women left 'fearful yet overjoyed' - a phrase which captures well what we can imagine must have been the 'subjective conditions' of the disciples in the first days after the Resurrection of Jesus. The soldiers meanwhile went to the chief priests to tell them 'all that had happened'.

This is an interesting phrase. Think about it. 'All that had happened' means not just the women arriving but an angel looking like lightning, an earthquake, the stone rolled back and the angel sitting on it. Think then about the total lack of interest on the part of the chief priests in all that had happened. They were, presumably, Sadducees, believing in neither angels nor resurrection. So a massive doctrinal and ideological stone blocked their access to what this might mean. In their eyes none of it could have happened as the guards recounted it. They do not bat an eyelid, then, in proposing a political solution, to pay off the guards and promote what is after all the most obvious reductionist explanation of the disappearance of Christ's body: his disciples came and took it while the guards slept. (Forget about them being like dead men in the presence of the angel.)

Meanwhile another mind is considering these things. All that has happened is 'by the set plan and foreknowledge of God', who allowed Jesus to be killed but has now freed him from the throes of death (Acts 2:23, first reading today). It is another, and the most penetrating, way of seeing things, in which those who come to believe can share, a transformation of the subjective conditions for seeing the Risen Lord brought about by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We see how that transformation works in the preaching of Peter recounted in today's first reading.

So what has all this to do with me and with you? Various subjective conditions are obviously possible, some of which facilitate an encounter with the Risen Lord, others of which make that difficult or even impossible. That of the high priests and elders shuts things down completely: the news involves too radical a change for them (and a loss of power too, perhaps). The women are between fear and joy, a condition that leaves them open to an encounter with the Risen Lord. Perhaps, though, we are like the guards, not particularly committed one way or the other, somewhere spiritually between being asleep and being half-dead.

Finally there are the subjective conditions of God's heart and mind, if we can speak like that. The Holy Spirit is to be poured out by Jesus, risen and exalted to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33). The subjective conditions of the Blessed Trinity are therefore that the Father waits (and wants) to pour out the life and the love that flow now from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. We will spend the next seven weeks meditating on these conditions, coming to see something of this reality.

May God send an angel to remove whatever blocks our access to that Life and Love: whatever fear, or indifference, or tiredness, or resistance would prevent us from seeing the Risen Lord. To live with his Life and to love with his Love is what it means to encounter the Risen Lord. It means having our fears removed and our doubts resolved. It means living in the fulness of joy.

Easter Sunday

Readings: Acts 10:34a, 37-43; Psalm 118; Colossians 3:1-4 or 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8; John 20:1-9

What was it exactly that the other disciple believed when he saw the tomb empty and the linen cloths lying on the ground? The implication is that Peter had already 'seen and believed'. Is it simply that they now believed Mary Magdalene's story, that somebody had taken the Lord and laid him somewhere else? Perhaps this is all for the moment. John tells us, what is painfully clear from all the gospels, that 'as yet' they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. It seems unlikely then that they came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus just by seeing an empty tomb and abandoned clothing. They had not encountered the Risen Lord, they had not received the gift of the Spirit.

So what do they believe, at this moment in the story? They have taken the Lord's body and we don't know where it is. Is it possible that, 'back in their homes' (v.10, omitted by the lectionary), they realised that the strangest thing about the empty tomb was not what was not in it but what was in it: linen clothes lying on the ground. Why would grave robbers or anybody else taking the body away stop to undress the corpse so as to escape with a naked corpse instead of a camouflaged one?

They might have thought then (as I did with the help of Professor Google) of scripture passages that speak of linen clothing being left behind. Linen clothing is spoken of most often in the Bible in relation to liturgical furnishings and to priests and their functions, firstly in the Tent of Meeting and later in the Jerusalem Temple. There are two passages that speak of linen clothing being left behind.

On the Day of Atonement, Aaron, the high priest, is to leave his linen clothing in the holy place (Leviticus 16:22-24). He is passing from one reality back to another, from the presence of God above the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies back to the people gathered outside for whose sins he is offering the sacrifice of atonement. The linen clothing is not just decent and appropriate for one ministering in the sanctuary, it serves to mark the separation between the holiness of God and the profanity of the world outside.

After the Exile, when the Temple is being prepared for the return of the glory of the Lord, we find a second reference to priests leaving their linen vestments in the holy place. This is in Ezekiel 44: some sections of the Levitical priesthood are allowed to take up their duties again, but they must do so respecting the older law that marked the separation of the holy and the profane. Once again, at certain moments, they are to shed their linen clothing and leave it lying there.

So linen clothing being shed evokes the Day of Atonement and we have just completed our celebration of that Day. There are two striking differences, however, between the ritual described in Leviticus and the sacrifice accomplished by Jesus. One is where he emerges from. Whereas the high priest emerged from the Holy of Holies, Jesus is returning from what we might call the Unholy of Unholies, the place of death, the kingdom of sin. Saint Paul says that God made him to be sin so that we might be redeemed. It is from there that our High Priest, shedding his linen clothing, emerges into the light of a new day.

The second difference is that our High Priest is also our scapegoat. In the Leviticus liturgy the priest sacrifices a goat and a bull and then sends another goat into the wilderness, having laid on him the sins of all the people. But our High Priest has taken on himself the sins of all the people. The goat has become the lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

You see what a rich seam of thought and association is opened up by thinking about the linen clothing left lying in the tomb. It is all about the Temple, and priesthood, and sacrifices, and the separation of holy and profane. Now our High Priest has offered the one and final sacrifice for sins. He has dissolved the separation between the holy and the profane - this is represented by the tearing of other linen cloths, the curtains in the Temple. No more temple, no more priesthood, no more sacrifice in the sense these things had before.

It sends us back to the beginning of Jesus' public ministry in Saint John's gospel, to the cleansing of the Temple, and Jesus' claim that he could rebuild it in three days. After his resurrection from the dead, we are told, the disciples understood the scripture and that he had said these things. They - like we - are only at the beginning of understanding what it means to say Christ is Risen, Jesus is Alive. The walls of separation have been torn down, not just between human beings, but between the human being and God. Where is Jesus' body now? It is the Church, it is the Eucharist, it is the poor. He has given His body for us. He has given His body to us.

There is much more that could be said about this rich seam of thought and association. The last reference to linen clothing in the Bible is in the Book of Revelation. There, in 19:8, we are told that the Bride, being dressed for her wedding feast with the Lamb, is clothed in linen garments and that these garments are 'the righteous deeds of the saints'. In Him we have become a priestly people and like priests of old we are to clothe ourselves in linen. But this clothing is made up of actions and dispositions, gifts and fruits, the way of living of those who belong to the Body of Christ, who live by his Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Peter and the other disciple are a long way from understanding all this on Easter Sunday morning. And so are we. But over time, with God's help, they and we enter more deeply into the meaning of what we celebrate today: He is risen! And everything is radically changed.

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

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

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.