Author: DVO

The Gospel of Matthew recounts the story of Jesus rising from the dead, recognized as the Christ, the Messiah foretold by the prophets. The women who came to minister to the dead body of Jesus were startled. Something completely unexpected happens, something that changes their lives. Reflecting on the reading, Pope Francis says we often retract from God’s surprises for our lives. He notes that we often act as the Apostles, preferring to remain in the security of our present state, standing in front of the tomb, recalling the memory of the one that has passed on like so many other historical figures. Why are we so closed off to the newness that God offers us? Do we lack the confidence that God can change any circumstance? Do we not believe God can forgive any sin if we are open to his mercy and grace? Here is the reality of what the resurrection of Jesus meant, as stated by St. Paul: “If Jesus is not raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain, and we are the most pitiable of men.” In all that you can read and research, it all comes down to this: if Jesus was not raised from death, Christianity is a fraud and a joke. But if he did rise from death, then Christianity is the fullness of God’s revelation, and Jesus must be the absolute center of our lives. There is no third option.

In Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, he intentionally focuses on the most graphic aspects of Jesus’s crucifixion. The focal point was to get us to understand the immensity of pain Jesus endured as our paschal sacrifice. In Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s book, The Passion and the Cross, he writes with great insight about the way the gospels make scant reference to the physical suffering of Jesus. He sees beyond the blood and gore and concentrates on the inner attitudes at the core of Jesus’ heart of forgiveness, empathy, willingness, and love. Dr. Conrad Yap, in a review of Fr. Rolheiser’s book, notes the four key themes of his book that clearly show us why the Cross of Christ is so significant: The cross as a moral revolution points us away from external things toward the inner life of a spiritual man; the cross as the deepest revelation shows us the passion of God and how he longs for us even before we wake up from our sinful slumber; the cross of salvation gives us life; and the resurrection leads us to life everlasting in the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Fr. Rolheiser further observes “six interpenetrating things” about what it means to carry our cross daily: (1) accepting that suffering is part of life; (2) choosing not to pass down bitterness to others; (3) having the willingness to let parts of us die; (4) waiting for the resurrection that is to come; (5) humbly acknowledging that life is often not what we expect; and (6) a willingness to surrender our lives. The lesson of Jesus’s passion asks us is: In the darkness of life, will we let go of our light? In the face of hatred, will we let go of love? That’s the real and central drama of the Passion of the Christ, not the ropes, whips, and nails.

In The Farewell Discourses, Adrienne von Speyr speaks of the hour of the Lord’s return to the Father is near. The Lord is not thinking of that but of accomplishing the highest and most definitive act possible in the time remaining to him on earth, of realizing the uttermost love. He knows that he comes from love and is going to love and that he himself is love. This love he wants to give to his own, just as he possesses it: wholly and prodigally. In everything he does, he desires only to love. As Jesus moves from disciple to disciple as he washes their feet in today’s gospel reading, one can wonder what his thoughts were. We can imagine him lovingly gazing at each disciple, seeing a person for whom he would win salvation. C.S. Lewis is famous for saying that humility results not so much from thinking less of ourselves but from thinking of ourselves less. Surely, Jesus was thinking of each person whom he was serving. Our first instinct in seeing this action played out again in our churches two thousand years later may be to see the foot washing as simply a good deed to be repeated, which of course, it is. But in his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI broadens this initial instinct and views the washing as a deep foreshadowing of Christ’s ultimate kenosis: the emptying of his divinity on the cross for our salvation. Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, reflecting on this reading, suggests that Jesus could be imagining the shadow of that cross on which he died as he prayed in the Garden, “Father, if it is your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” Thus my humble part this Holy Week is to stretch my imagination, to accompany Jesus to his cross in my life so that the Holy Eucharist, given as a gift this blessed evening, might flow through me.

When one looks at the miracles of Jesus, it is interesting to see that so many of them are connected to opening up or otherwise healing someone’s eyes, ears, or tongue. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that these miracles, of course, always have more than a physical significance. Eyes are opened to see more deeply and spiritually; ears are opened to hear things more compassionately; and tongues are loosened to praise God more freely and speak words of reconciliation and love to each other. Thomas Merton describes a revelation he had one day while standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville: “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all of those people, that they were mine, and I, theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin, desire, nor self-knowledge can reach the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only we could all see each other that way all the time! There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed.” This is a world in which we hear, see, and speak from the depth of our great soul of oneness with God in which I become a different person altogether; those moments when I am overwhelmed by compassion when everyone is brother or sister to me when I want to give of myself without concern of cost when I can carry the tensions of life without a breakdown in my virtue when I would willingly die for others, and when my arms and my heart would want nothing other than to embrace the whole world and everyone in it.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser reminds us that there was a time before there was light. The universe was dark before God created light. However, eventually, the world grew dark again. When? We are told in the Gospels that as Jesus was dying on the cross, between the sixth and ninth hour, it grew dark, and Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” There’s a darkness that besets us whenever the forces of love seem overpowered by the forces of hatred. The light extinguished then is the light of hope, but there is deeper darkness, and this is the kind of darkness that the Gospels say formed a cloud over the world as Jesus hung dying. The renowned biblical scholar Fr. Raymond E. Brown tells us that the darkness that beset the world as Jesus hung dying would last until we believe in the resurrection. Until we believe that God has a life-giving response for all death and that God will roll back the stone from any grave, no matter how deeply goodness is buried under hatred and violence, the darkness of Good Friday will continue to darken our planet. Mohandas K. Gandhi said that we can see the truth of God always creating new light simply by looking at history. Throughout history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and they can seem invincible for a time. But in the end, they always fall. Love conquered all, even death.

We can never be challenged too strongly about being committed to social justice. A key, non-negotiable summons that comes from Jesus himself is the challenge to reach out to the poor, the excluded, and those whom society deems expendable. Therefore, the vast global issue of justice should preoccupy us. Can we be good Christians or decent people without letting the daily news baptize us? The majority of the world still lives in hunger, thousands are dying of one pandemic after another, countless lives are torn apart by war and violence, and we are still, as a world, a long way from dealing realistically with racism, sexism, abortion, and the integrity of physical creation. These are major moral issues; we may not escape into our private world and simply ignore them. Thomas Merton believed that the real battle we face is one of changing hearts. He says you have helped bring about permanent structural, moral change on this planet when you change a heart. Everything else is simply one power attempting to displace another. In his teaching about the vital importance of honesty in small things, John of the Cross says: “It makes no difference whether a bird is tied down by a heavy rope or by the slenderest of cords; it can’t fly in either case.” You can generate more energy by splitting a single atom than you can by harnessing all the forces of water and wind on earth. Private morality is not an unimportant, unaffordable luxury, a soft virtue, or something that stands in the way of commitment to social justice. It’s the deep place where the moral atom needs to be split – Fr. Ron Rolheiser.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser speaks to the nature of emptying ourselves. He writes that the incarnation, the central mystery of our Christian faith, invites us to look down, investigate the small, and descend. Why? Because that is what God did in the incarnation. He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a slave. He became small, a helpless baby. The movement of God in Jesus Christ is a downward one. Thus, among other things, it invites us to enter into the experience of powerlessness. It invites us to look down, to investigate the small. It invites us to look for God in the baby rather than in the corporate magnate, the president, the prime minister, the rock star, the star athlete, the brilliant writer, the Nobel prize-winning scientist, or the Hollywood god or goddess. It is not that God cannot be present in these. To be Christian, to be persons who keep giving flesh to God in this world, we must ultimately be free of the tyranny of ambition and achievement, measuring our meaning and success from what gives us upward mobility. A valuable criterion to discern is whether we are following Christ or following our own desires. Are moving upward or downward? Are we deeming equality with God as something to be grasped at? Are we growing in power, prestige, and admiration? Or are we emptying ourselves and assuming the powerlessness of the poor?

As we approach Palm Sunday, Saint Peter Damian’s beautiful prayer foreshadows the hope for a nation of believers in what our savior will endure for us. “When your soul goes forth from your body, may the radiant company of angles come to meet you, and may your judge, the senate of the apostles, release you; may Christ, who suffered for you, rescue you from punishment; may Christ who was crucified for your sake, free you from excruciating pain; may Christ, who humbled himself to die for you, free you from death; may Christ, the Son of the living God, set you in the evergreen loveliness of his paradise, and may he, the true Shepherd, recognize you as one of his flock, may he free you from all your sins and assign you a place at his right hand in the company of his elect. May you see your Redeemer face to face, and standing in his presence forever, may you behold with blessed eyes Truth revealed in all its fullness. And so, having taken your place in the ranks of the saints, may you enjoy the sweetness of divine contemplation forever and ever. Amen.”

Looking at the world today, it is not easy to believe that everywhere Christ is born again, that God looks down on the wreckage and misery, the fiasco if you like, that we have made of the world, and, seeing us in the midst of it says, “This is my well-beloved Son!” Caryll Houselander writes that this is so, and however difficult or insignificant our life may seem, it is precious to God as Christ is precious to God. On each one in whom Christ lives, God’s infinite love is concentrated at every moment. If this were realized, there could be no one who could not fulfill the first condition of rest, which is trust. If it were not for Christ in us, we would be unable to trust. We are too weak and could not believe in God’s goodness if we had only ourselves to believe in; neither could we love one another if we had only ourselves to worship. We can trust God with Christ’s trust in the Father; that is the trust which is our rest. Our rest in a world that is full of unrest is Christ’s trust in his Father; our peace in a world without peace is our surrender, complete as the surrender of the sleeping child to its mother, of the Christ in us, to God who is both Father and Mother. 

Jesus was not concerned with the controversy many of his pronouncements created. Today was one of the most striking statements made to his Jewish audience, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” In our catechesis, we learn early in our faith lives this wording of “I AM” was how God identified himself to Moses in the story of the burning bush, “If the Israelites ask me, ‘what is his name?’ what am I to tell them?” “God replied, ‘I am who I am.'” Jesus was making a direct statement of his relationship with the Father. Bishop Barron asks, “What does that mean when God defines himself this way? God is saying, in essence, that he cannot be defined, described, or delimited. God is not a being but rather the sheer act of to-be itself. The sheer act of being itself cannot be avoided, and it cannot be controlled. It can only be surrendered to in faith.” This was a revelatory moment and one that set the Lord on his journey to the cross.