Author: DVO

Mary Magdalene also teaches us the great cost of such a Christ-centered life. Rachel Bulman writes that when our hearts are centered on Jesus, the things that formerly held such value in this world quickly lose their luster in the weight of his gaze. We will desire to be poured out, embarrassed for him, scorned for him, and give it all away in service to him. This life of self-donation inevitably leads us to the cross. In our reflection verse from the Gospel of John, the risen Lord asks Mary why she is weeping, and at that moment, she thinks that he is the gardener. The great irony of this is that Jesus is the gardener. He is the great gardener returning to the earth to put what was disordered in the first garden in the proper order. He sows the seeds of redemption into the heart of Mary Magdalene, telling her not to cling to him but to go and tell everyone that he has returned. In many ways, she is the blueprint for the making of great evangelizers, for an evangelist must live in such a way that the Gospel is preached no matter the cost. Living a life of complete self-donation and total Christ-centeredness will cost us all that the world has to offer but will inevitably lead us over and over again to the same garden of the Resurrection.

Paula Huston reflects on today’s verse and brings us back to what was occurring after the death and resurrection of Jesus. People had questions as many do to this very day. Did the angel roll back the stone and sit on it, or was he inside the tomb when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrived? Were there, in fact, two angels? And how did the women respond to the news that Jesus had been raised from the dead? With joy? Terror? Bewilderment? Did they rush off to tell the other disciples, or were they struck dumb? If our belief in the resurrection is based on whether or not the details of the empty tomb scene line up precisely in the four Gospel accounts, then we’ve got a problem. Yet Christianity itself depends on whether or not this story is true. And two thousand years later, we cannot return to that historical period and interview the witnesses. What we can know, however, is whether Christ lives on today. Do we experience Him in His Word and the Holy Eucharist? Do we hear Him speaking into the depths of our souls? Do we see Him at work through the deeds of those who have devoted their lives to Him? Is he slowly changing us from one kind of person into another? Here, in our own lives, is where we either find proof of the resurrection or we don’t. If we passionately desire Christ’s presence, He will come. If we genuinely desire to know Him, He will open our eyes to the invisible divine reality that grounds our physical existence.

The Gospel of John provides an account of the resurrection of Jesus. Bishop Robert Barron writes that John describes the early morning on the first day of the week. It was still dark, just as it was at the beginning of time before God said, “Let there be light.” But a light was about to shine, and a new creation was about to appear. The stone had been rolled away. That stone, blocking the entrance to the tomb of Jesus, stands for the finality of death. When someone we love dies, it is as though a great stone is rolled across them, permanently blocking our access to them. And this is why we weep at death, not just in grief but in a kind of existential frustration. Undoubtedly, the first disciples must have thought a grave robber had been at work. But the incredible Johannine irony is that the greatest grave robber had been at work. God had opened the grave of His Son, just as the prophet Ezekiel said, “I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser reminds us that one of the tasks of Easter is to rekindle the creed within ourselves. In essence, we are saying that God is ultimately still in charge of this universe, despite any indications to the contrary. Immediately upon experiencing the resurrected Jesus, the earliest Christians spontaneously voiced a one-line creed: “Jesus is Lord!” That does, in fact, say it all. When we strain to hear the voices of Good Friday; when we affirm that Jesus has been raised from the dead; when we shout to the heavens that Jesus is Lord of this world, we are saying everything else within our faith as well. To celebrate Easter is to affirm that all of this is true. Amen, amen!

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?