Continue to pray as you feel drawn, but do not worry about it, for worry comes from self-love. You must abandon yourself to the leading of God with no other intention than that of pleasing him, and when you know that you have this intention deep in your heart, you must not waste time and reflecting about yourself and about the degree of virtue you have attained; occupy yourself with him whom you love and bother very little about yourself.
ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Letter 135
Reading one and the same word of Scripture, one person is nourished by history only, another looks for the typical meaning, another by means of this same meaning reaches towards the contemplative meaning. Most often, these three dimensions are found there at the same time… In this way the words of God advance at the pace of the reader.
GREGORY THE GREAT Homilies on Ezekiel, I
No one can see God and live. It is true: I saw him and died. Nothing could again satisfy me except that interior wilderness where life is simply God to me and I to God.
SR. MAUREEN McCABE, OCSO I Am the Way
I believe in the sun, even when it isn't shining
I believe in love, even when I feel it not
I believe in God, even when He is silent
AN ANONYMOUS PRISONER Written on a Nazi concentration camp wall
It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one's hunger and sleep, one's cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying, I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially so about it as mine, though doubtless it is not somebody else's. I must learn gradually to forget program and artifice.
THOMAS MERTON
The Intimate Shepherd
Christ is risen! On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Church invites us to contemplate the Risen Lord through the image of the Good Shepherd. But today we hear only the first third of Jesus’ long discourse on this theme in the Gospel of John. Our text ends just before Jesus’ declaration: I am the good shepherd. Instead, what we hear is: I am the gate for the sheep. Before speaking of the close relationship he wishes to create between himself and his sheep, Jesus presents himself as the gate through which every sheep must enter; that is, he wishes to establish the conditions that must be accepted by us so that he, Jesus, may become the very source of life for us, who aspire to be his faithful disciples.
This gospel evokes, with vivid realism, the presence of impostors all around us, who claim to be shepherds but are not. These impostors have only their own interests at heart, and Jesus calls them “thieves and robbers”. No doubt he is literally thinking of the very Pharisees to whom he is speaking; yet what Jesus says applies to impostors of all times, all those who loudly claim a spurious authority and want to bend people to their own purposes by exploiting their fears, insecurities and lusts, and by seducing them to the worship of false gods by holding out fantastic promises that can never be fulfilled.
Now, while the Good Shepherd desires the life and well-being of the sheep, these others seek rather their ruin, for their own gain and the sinister ends of their own privileged class and party. This discourse of the Lord is, therefore, much more than a mere poem of consolation that uses the quaint image of a shepherd to cheaply manipulate our emotions and our need to be looked after. The parable is above all a robust and sober instruction through which the Lord wishes to teach us fundamental criteria about how to follow him and only him, with our feet firmly planted on the ground, so as to receive from him the abundant life he came to give us.
The Good Shepherd discourse follows immediately as Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ question: Are we then also blind? And the Evangelist John comments: Jesus used the image [of the shepherd] to speak to the Pharisees, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. As always, the Lord strives to reveal both the reason why he came into this world (that is, our salvation) and the way in which he wants to save us (that is, by sharing with us the life he brings, the Life which he is). But we see that there is great opposition in the world both to the salvation he brings and to the way he shares his own life, and this opposition is embodied in the attitude of the Pharisees. It should be obvious, yet still worth stressing, that the Pharisaical attitude is far from being merely a historical quirk of that time, religion and geographical region. In actual fact, as experience shows, it concerns us all since the Pharisees’ gut reaction toward Jesus only exhibits the instinctive, default attitude of natural man before our conversion to Christ.
What, then, exactly is at stake in these passages of John’s Gospel? Nothing less than the conflict between Law and Grace. The human ego always insists on saving itself by its own means and devices. Self-sufficiency and extreme individualism are among the hallmarks of original sin. Natural, fallen man yearns at all costs to become enthroned in a reckless freedom. Consequently, to the Pharisees’ unredeemed ears, there are at least two fundamental elements in Jesus’ teaching that are scandalous to their brand of piety. One is Jesus’ revelation that he personally brings us salvation, while they, the Pharisees, were convinced that salvation comes rather through the correct observance of the Law of Moses. And the other scandalous element is precisely that it is solely Jesus—an ordinary man and Jew, in appearance like all other Jewish men, their neighbors—who brings this salvation, as he himself declares today in crystal-clear fashion: I have come that the sheep may have life, and have it abundantly.
‘How can a human being’, the Pharisees of all ages murmur, ‘make such declarations without claiming to be God?’ In the eyes of the Pharisees and in our own eyes, when we insist on our own self-righteousness, Jesus is necessarily the great Violator: he disrupts both the rock-bottom psychological principle of human autonomy and the infallible dogma of theistic rationalism, which dictates that there exists only a distant and unknowable God. To boot, this conceptual Deity is above all not incarnatable, that is, utterly incapable and unwilling to put on human flesh and human nature.
In tremendous contrast to this Pharisaical outlook, Jesus’ Good Shepherd discourse takes up the doctrine of spiritual childhood familiar to us from the Synoptic Gospels. Truly, I say to you, we hear in Matthew, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (18:3). In place of the Pharisees’ doctrinal rigidity and fierce self-sufficiency, Jesus offers us this wonderfully pastoral and engaging earthly image of the intimate bond that exists between a shepherd and his sheep. Here Jesus invites us to come down from the clouds of our pride and false intellectual rigor to abide with him and his plan of salvation within the sheepfold, where we can smell the sweet scent of the earth seasoned with all the elements of tangible human and animal life.
If it is true, as Pope Francis liked to say, that “the authentic shepherd must smell like the sheep”, it is also true that the sheep must humbly accept their condition as earthly creatures—limited, dependent, vulnerable—fragile and often wayward creatures that have an absolute need to belong to their shepherd, to find their home in his arms. Here, within the sheepfold, there belong only the pure of heart, the poor in spirit, who yield to God’s surprising ways, who know how to rejoice and flash sudden smiles, and who give themselves freely to the great Adventure of Grace, following in the footsteps of the one Great Shepherd of the sheep.
Now, any call to intimacy such as this, even at the purely human level, has something subversive about it, since true, human intimacy always urges us to leap beyond all secular structures of power and all social conformity. And this is all the truer in the case of the call to divine intimacy, to familiarity with God in Jesus, because here love takes on an absolute, eternal character that transcends all the limits of this world. If I had to summarize Jesus’ complete answer to the problem of salvation and how to obtain it, I would say that the solution Jesus offers is quite simply this: to enter into intimacy with him in love and trust. Only through the experience of an intimate love shared with Jesus can we be freed from all false autonomy, which in fact slits our soul’s throat and causes us to perish because it severs the roots of our being. Only such intimacy, as well, can free us from a monolithic and tyrannical conception of God, which excludes from his nature any possibility of humanity and love.
Intense communion with himself is the answer to the human plight that Jesus proposes in today’s Gospel. Let’s see some of what this implies.
The key image of the sheepfold seems to me a metaphor for the Church—the place par excellence where intimacy with the one Shepherd and Savior is cultivated. Everything in the Church is intended to lead us to Jesus and to strengthen our knowledge of Jesus and our communion with him. Here, in the Church as embodied in our local Eucharistic community, we should find a safe, familiar, warm, and communal home. Here we should enjoy a deep sense of belonging. Here our own personal identity should merge quite naturally with the ecclesial identity of the Body of Christ. The Shepherd enters through the main gate and is that gate, because he is the Master of the house. It and all it contains belongs to him. His sheepfold is his kingdom! We can be sure that he will care for those who belong to him. The Master alone is responsible for the whole; he alone understands of what the salvation of all consists.
In this ambiance there should reign an atmosphere of family intimacy, seasoned, as we’ve said, with all the smells of earthly life, both the pleasant and the unpleasant. As well, Jesus places the main emphasis of intimacy with him on listening: The sheep listen to [the] voice [of the shepherd], he says. He calls each one by its name. He walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger, but rather will run away from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This harmonious correspondence between the Shepherd’s voice and the instinctive way in which the sheep recognize it goes beyond being a simple metaphor. Such harmony between voice and recognition already forms a central part of human communion and communication.
Only the mysterious bonds of love can explain this phenomenon. To recognize, without a second thought, the tone and quality of the voice of someone we love, reveals a whole inner world of shared experience, of mutual trust and the journey we have already traveled together. This means that these sheep dwell both in the “fold” of the community and in the Heart of their common Shepherd. We have entered here, at the Master’s invitation, into a dimension that is, strictly speaking, mystical yet remains at the same time ecclesial. There is no contradiction between these two aspects.
In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles we saw that, in the voice of Peter, who proclaimed to them the crucified and risen Christ, calling them to conversion, the Jews recognized the voice of Christ himself, and those who accepted Peter’s word were baptized. Yes, after the Resurrection and the Ascension, it is the Apostles at the head and the entire Church along with them, who become the mouth and the voice of Jesus to the world.
Let us conclude with a very practical point: The sheep, that is the faithful ones who recognize the voice of their beloved Master and Shepherd, must follow him: he goes ahead of them, and the chief duty and activity of the sheep is to actually follow him. In other words, it is not enough to simply take pleasure in the intimacy of Jesus’ presence and find comfort in it, as we have seen throughout Paschal time in the case of Mary Magdalen. Jesus, you see, is not static. We must actively follow Jesus, that is, share in his mission, live out his destiny with him, and obey the Father by doing with Jesus the works that the Father has given him to do. This is exactly what St Peter exhorts us to do in the second reading, when he writes: If you endure suffering for doing good, it is a grace in God’s eyes. This is indeed what you have been called to do, for Christ himself suffered for you: he left you an example so that you might follow in his footsteps.
Brothers and sisters: The Lord of the world and the Shepherd of our souls bore our sins in his body on the cross, thus becoming a sacrifice of atonement, the Lamb of God who was slain. By the same logic, his sheep are called to become so united with their Shepherd that they will no longer be able to separate their personal identity from the redemptive mission of their Lord, who will be at work in and through our own joys and sufferings, until the end of time. Just as Jesus did, we too must offer ourselves each day to the world and each other as Eucharistic food, through both hidden prayer and visible works of charity. We cannot possibly keep for ourselves the abundant life with which he has filled us. Alleluia! Christ is risen, and his rising empowers us to live his very life!
As the heart wounded by a poisoned arrow cannot be easy and at rest but seeks relief from all sides, so the soul pierced by the arrow of love never ceases seeking to relieve its pains. He who is in love is said to have lost his heart or to have had it stolen by the object of his love. His heart is not his own, but the property of the person he loves. This consideration will enable the soul to discover whether it loves God simply or not. If it loves him it will have no heart for itself, nor for its own pleasure or profit, but for the honor, glory and pleasure of God; because the more the heart is occupied with itself, the less it is occupied with God. The soul can test itself by these signs: is it anxiously seeking God? Has it no pleasure in anything but him? It is clear that the soul which loves God seeks no other reward for its services other than to love God perfectly.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Spiritual Canticle
It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard. The words of the proud man impose silence on all others, so that he alone may be heard. The humble man speaks only in order to be spoken to. The humble man asks nothing but an alms, then weights and listens.
THOMAS MERTON Thoughts in Solitude
God has loved man. This is the sublime truth which alone provides an explanation for the mystery of the Christian life, and which gives to the faithful the courage necessary to carry on here on earth in all the obscurity, monotony, and difficulty of life. We must have faith in this love, and, believing in it, we must put our trust in God, whatever may be the difficulties of the road we have to travel. It is always easier to travel on through the night when we know that there is someone waiting for us, that there is someone who loves us.
DO IDESBALD RYELANDT, O.S.B. Union With Christ
This morning’s Gospel begins dark and melancholy, as two brokenhearted disciples walk along despondently. “We thought he was the One who would redeem Israel, our only Hope, but we saw him mocked, scourged and crucified.” Soon Jesus walks along with them, just another Stranger on his way out of Jerusalem. They’re so dejected they cannot even recognize him. Jesus listens, interested in what’s weighing on their hearts. “Why are you so sad? What are you two discussing?” “What are we discussing?” Cleopas asks in exasperation. “Are you the only one who doesn’t know what happened in Jerusalem?” “Gee, no. What?” says Jesus. This is probably one of the most tragicomic moments in all of Scripture, as the risen Lord Jesus, his body riddled with the deep wounds and scars of his passion, plays dumb. My brothers and sisters, he knows the story alright; it’s written all over his body, even into the depths of his newly pierced heart.
Then they explain - the empty tomb, the message of angels; but no one knows where Jesus’ body is. And then this Stranger tells them frankly, that they’re fools, not thinking straight. You know your Scripture; the Christ had to suffer all these things and so enter into his glory. It’s all right there; it was supposed to be like this. And then he interprets for them “what referred to him in all the Scripture.” Imagine listening to Jesus the Word telling his life with all these sacred words and allusions; all the hopes, the inklings of ancestors, all the prophecies fulfilled in the beautiful, wounded body of a crucified Lord who is truly risen and now really right beside them though unrecognized.
Their hearts too slow to understand are suddenly quickened; now hearts on fire with faith and joy in his presence. And they don’t want this Stranger to leave them. They beg him, “Please stay with us.” And so there is a supper at a small inn. They sit at table with this shadowy Stranger, the lamps are lit, and then they see – it is Jesus their Master, the One they long for, feeding them, breaking bread with hands gashed with deep holes. He breaks the bread; he himself is the Broken Bread. Brokenness signals resurrection. Jesus the Stranger is finally recognized in this ritual gesture of a community meal. Then he disappears. But they know they have seen him. This “drastic physicality” of the wounded, risen Jesus is undeniable. They leave the inn and rush back to Jerusalem, now the place of hope beyond hope.
All through his Gospel, Luke has been tracing the history of salvation. And if, in the Garden of Eden the eyes of Eve and Adam were opened as they ate the forbidden fruit and they suddenly knew their nakedness; now here at a supper in Emmaus, Cleopas and his companion, most probably his wife, have their eyes opened with an absolutely unprecedented and “deeply welcome knowledge.” They see and recognize the risen Lord Jesus as he breaks the bread for them. Their once broken hearts have been broken open by the vision of a beautiful, broken Messiah breaking bread. It is the banquet in the Kingdom. Redemption is at hand; humanity’s long exile is over. The new creation has begun; and paradise regained.
Truth be told, the disciples never really understood what Jesus was in for, no matter how often he had tried to explain to them. And we may smugly assess their foolishness, thinking we’d know better. But how often we too are fools, too slow to understand as our lives in the cloister unfold, very often like a continuous repetition of that trek to Emmaus. Disappointed, our best hopes dashed; we plod glumly along. We feel like impostors; our best hopes for progress in love and kindness, progress in prayer and holiness cannot be achieved. Plus it seems the world is falling apart. So sad and self-absorbed, we forget that Jesus is right beside us. Then he explains, it’s supposed to be like this, and he shows us his wounded risen body.
All will be well; and all manner of things will be well, for in his own body Jesus has reversed everything, and brought us home to the Father. The “horizon of God’s reign is immeasurable,” it eliminates death and leads to eternal life. And it begins here and now, if we will open our eyes and our hearts to see. From “the very beginning, God's intention was nothing other than this world, the world in which we live now - perfected, healed and sanctified.”
Finally, my sisters and brothers let us be clear. In all the resurrection accounts we’ve been listening to these days, the Lord Jesus is not playing games, a kind of continual hide and seek: now you see me now you don’t; catch me if you can. No. The message, the sacred reality we are called to embrace is that the risen Lord Jesus is always and ever present, whether we perceive him or not. He always walks with us, speaks to us words of truth and peace and life and wants to feed us with his own wounded body and blood. This is what we gather in this church, his house, to celebrate and share over and over again.
We have been ransomed from our futile conduct, with the precious blood of the wounded Christ. But how slow we are to understand that confusion is grace, how reluctant to trust that God wants to turn things over and show us beautiful opportunities for his grace in our mess. Jesus is incessantly accompanying us, though most often hidden - in a thousand places and faces. And if we desperately want hearts on fire, at the end of each day, even better perhaps a million times a day, we must notice and reflect. Notice and reflect. Where, when have I seen you? How have you been using anything at all to get my attention? When have you spoken to me?
We are indeed foolish, O Lord, please stay with us; shows that it is OK to travel along in confusion, even sometimes to suffer, if we are with you. Give us faith. Stay with us in our foolishness. Teach us your divine foolishness, the mad folly of your love for us. Give us the broken bread that you are and help us to see you there, to consume you and so more and more be consumed with love for you.
Includes insights from:
Luke Timothy Johnson, Gerhard Lohfink and NT Wright in The Resurrection of the Son of God.
Today we greet St Benedict-Joseph Labre, the 18th-century vagrant whom we celebrate as the first saint of this Paschal season. After trying out both the Trappist and the Carthusian way of life, he was led by an extreme sacrificial grace to squander his life with and for Christ on the roads of France and Italy. He appears as the very embodiment of St Paul’s affirmation that the folly of God is wiser than [the wisdom of] men (1 Cor 1:25).
Now, if Benedict-Joseph could joyfully become a “fool for Christ” this was only because of his conviction that, for our sake, Christ had first become a “fool for God”. It is Christ who sets for all time the redeeming pattern of divine madness through his life of freely embraced humiliation, suffering, and an ignominious death. It takes a faith like St Paul’s to recognize in this disruptive pattern the uttermost revelation of God’s folly of love for humankind.
Benedict-Joseph’s life of freely chosen poverty and itinerancy witnessed to Jesus’ own self-emptying in order to give us new and everlasting life. The Christian must give all in order to gain all, both for himself and for the world. Like the Son of Man, Benedict-Joseph “had nowhere to lay his head” in this world (Mt 8:20) because his head’s only destination was the blissful lap of the Father, and he would accept no substitutes.
This puzzling saint upsets all our categories of classification, by which we normally seek to make rational sense even out of the deepest mysteries of faith. It is not surprising that he is the patron saint of both the homeless and the mentally challenged. He subverts all our categories of “normalcy”, not intentionally but by his mere existence in uncompromising conformity with Christ. No ready formulary for his feast exists in the present Roman Missal, and one must scramble around for what prayers to use from the Common of the Saints. For us monks he is a supreme reminder and warning that all our monastic regularity and minute observances ought never to become their own end. They will surely become obstacles to our union with Christ if we allow a well-ordered monastic routine to extinguish the unruly fire of the Spirit’s divine folly within us.
Let us, then, now repent of all our attempts to domesticate God and his creative foolishness in our lives, as we strive to allow God’s grace to have its unpredictable way with us.
One day I saw three monks insulted and humiliated in the same way at the same moment. The first felt he had been cruelly hurt; he was distressed but managed not to say anything. The second was happy for himself but grieved for the one who had insulted him. The third fought only of the harm suffered by his neighbor, And wept with the most ardent compassion. The first was prompted by fear; the second was urged on by the hope of reward; the third was moved by love.
JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Perfection, 8th step
One can distinguish five reasons why God allows the devils to attack us: first, so that from attack and counter attack attack we may become practiced in discerning good from evil; second, so that our virtue may be maintained in the heat of the struggle and so be confirmed in an impregnable position; third, So that as we advanced in virtue we may avoid presumption and learn humility; fourth, to inspire in us in unreserved hatred for evil through the experience with us have of it; fifth, and above all, that we may attain inner freedom and remain convinced both of our own weakness and of the strength of him who has come to our aid.
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Centuries on Charity
Jesus aligns himself with those who do simple, anonymous acts of love. Who can know precisely where in the wide world all the many such acts of self-giving take place? Where someone gives greater weight to his neighbor than to his own importance? Such things remain in the mystery of God.
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Who is a Christian?
Once more this Easter season, we meet the man born crippled who is brought to the Beautiful Gate in all his weakness to beg for alms. And the Lord Jesus comes to meet him in the representatives of his newborn Church, Peter and John. These two have neither silver nor gold, but what they do have, they give to the cripple: faith in the Name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of the Lord poured out at Pentecost. This is a marvelous exchange: weakness and need, faith and anointing.
We, too, are witnessing a marvelous exchange. For our brothers are here with weakness of body or spirit or both, and they, too, have expectations. They are ready to receive the healing that Jesus will give. The rest of us, also, are weak in many ways; but like Peter and John, we give what we have, namely, our community prayer and the sacramental signs of the laying on of hands and anointing with holy oil.
Who would think that such simple things as a human touch and a little oil could banish the pains of this world, and especially the one who has the power of death. We are a little like David against Goliath. With five smooth stones taken from the wadi and slipped into his shepherd’s pouch, David struck down the giant in the name of the Lord of hosts, and freed his people from their foe. We are doing something similar with this holy oil, striking the foe of the human race and restoring health and inner tranquility to our brothers.
When Peter healed the cripple, he said to the crowds, “Why should anyone be amazed at this as if this man were healed by our own power or piety? The same goes for us. The power is from Jesus. After he rose from the dead, he first received the Holy Spirit from his Father and then poured it out on us and on these holy oils. Exactly what type of healing will occur today is up to the Lord, but we know that a holy exchange is taking place today, each party bringing neither silver nor gold, only what they have: weakness, prayer, and trust in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God who has blessed this holy oil.
I desire your progress, but it strikes me that enough has already been said and written for the attainment of everything you need. If anything is lacking it is not writing or speaking (for generally there is a surfeit of these anyway), but silence and work. Speaking distracts, whereas silence and work collect the powers and make us inwardly strong. When a person has understood any helpful advice that has been given him, he does not need to hear or say more, but rather to put it into practice with silence and care, in loving humility and self-contempt. He should not go seeking after new things which can only satisfy the desires in a superficial manner (and even here cannot satisfy fully) while leaving the spirit week and empty, without deep inner virtue.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Letter VI
All our past sins, you see, which have been pressing on us, as it were, from behind, he has drowned and obliterated in Baptism. These dark things of ours were being ridden by unclean spirits as their mounts, and like horsemen they were riding them wherever they liked; and that's why the Apostle call them “rulers… of this present darkness” (Eph 6:12). We have been rid of all this through Baptism, as through the Red Sea, so-called because sanctified by the blood of the crucified Lord; let us not turn back to Egypt in our hearts, but with him as our protector and guide let us wend our way through the other trials and temptations of the desert toward the kingdom.
ST. AUGUSTINE Sermon
THESIS: The witness of the women in the gospel is an inspiration for us, even as monks, to announce the good news of the resurrection in our hidden life of prayer, our common life and our desire to be with Jesus.
I have been thinking about a very simple, one line summary, of all we have been celebrating this night. It is given to us by the Church as both an exhortation and a mission. It is the dismissal, “Go and announce the gospel of the Lord.” All that we have heard and seen tonight is a foundation for that mission – Lumen Christi; “O happy fault”; passing through the Red Sea and the cloud; renewal with water and the Spirit; the angel’s word, “…He has been raised from the dead.” So many mysteries have been placed before us, we might be tempted to ask, “Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Well, the answer is, to us. To our community. To our friends and family. To the Church, and through her to all people. The mighty arm of the Lord has raised our crucified Lord from the dead. “He died for our sins, and has been raised up for our justification.” Let us turn to the holy women who first heard the gospel to learn more about how to welcome and announce this good news.
First, I am sure you notice who it is that keeps vigil beside the tomb of Jesus; who it is that works into the night preparing the perfumed ointments; who rises early to go to the tomb – it is the women. Even more, consider their boldness. While all the other disciples had stayed behind locked doors, they go out at dawn to care for the body of Jesus. Whatever fear they feel is overcome by their love and gratitude. Notice is was only when the women brought back their message of the resurrection that Peter and the Beloved Disciple ran to the tomb. They were the catalyst. They may not have had the strength to remove the stone before the tomb, but their witness to what they had seen and heard had its own authority. Even the fear they experienced in the presence of the angel God turned to their benefit. It led them directly into the path of Jesus, who told them not to be afraid. And they responded with a fully feminine response; “…they approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.”
We have to marvel at the zeal of these women. As monks our vocation urges us to make haste with “with all dignity and decorum” to arrive at vigils. When sleepiness slows us down, at least we can make up for it by heeding the example of others who are already there, like the holy women. We have to convey the good news of Jesus’ resurrection with a message similar to that given by Martha to her sister Mary: “The Lord is asking for you.” Better to be with a community that seeks the Lord day and night. That is our charism. The holy women help us to choose the better part which staying close to our risen Lord.
Brothers and sisters, let us immerse ourselves in this holy night. From the depths of the Most Holy Trinity, we are called to announce the gospel of the Lord, each of us according to our vocation. This is what the holy women did, because they loved much.
On this Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion, it is good to face, insofar as we are able, the inexpressible horror of Jesus’ passion. Not only the pain, the utter desolation, and the shattering of all expectations, but the tragedy of human sin. But at the same time, we want to turn our faces to the immeasurable mercy of God. The holy women standing at a distance from Jesus’ cross felt helpless in the face of the reality, bewildered perhaps, and maybe even stupefied at what had happened. This was the inexpressible horror that was difficult to face. On the other hand, we have the scene of Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple at the cross. Even greater sorrow, but with Our Lady, an absolute acceptance of God’s will. I mention this because of one consolation that God gives to us in the face of all this: the prayers of the psalms, the divinely chosen prayers that enable us to pass through even the valley of darkness which is the Passion of Jesus.
The psalms feature prominently in our Holy Week Liturgies. Divinely inspired songs, they are – laments, thanksgivings, praises, curses – you name it, the whole gamut of human responses to the realities of our world, are summed up in the psalms, especially those used in the liturgy. They accompany us as we watch the mission of Jesus unfold. At each point in the liturgy, the Church sets before us psalms that correspond to the inner heart of Jesus.
Here are some examples. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was the psalmist’s cry taken up by Jesus when he could not shield his face from buffets and spitting which he endured out of love for us unto death. Or again, from the Holy Thursday liturgy, “I will take up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,” which was literally fulfilled when Jesus took up the cup of Passover wine and changed it into the cup of his blood in the institution of the Eucharist. Or today, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” that is, the moment when Jesus experienced the ultimate abandonment by his Father and yet embraced the mystery of the Father’s will. There are many other examples we could bring forward, examples from our daily rounds of psalmody that carry us throughout our days as monks. How else could we carry out our mission of intercession for the world without the psalms? How else could we bear the alternation of joys and sorrows which are our lot in this life. The psalms give us hope that the last word will be God’s as Jesus showed us with his cry, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The psalms give us hope that we can express the inexpressible – both the absolute horror of the cross and the evil that our human race is capable of, and the absolute love that God showed in raising Jesus from the dead and us from the death of sin. The psalms, especially as we hear them on the lips of Jesus, are the healing balm that the Father gives us in these holy days. Let us sing them in union with Jesus who alone is capable of expressing the inexpressible in his sufferings and his joys.
The “greater,” more Christian person is the person who serves more deeply; like Jesus, who serves at the eucharistic table and washes the feet of his enemy, Judas.
HANS ERS VON BALTHASAR New Elucidations
Because God has become man, man can become God. He rises by divine steps corresponding to those by which God humbled himself out of love for men, taking on himself without any change in himself the worst of our condition.
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Theological and Economic Chapters
‘God built humanity so that humanity might build for him’: churches, yes, but also societies, culture, the visible or invisible networks which sustain a ‘Eucharistic’ relationship between human beings and the earth. God comes near to us unendingly in the bread of life, the food of resurrection. Everything has to be built up around this seed of fire.
OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism
When we began our Palm Sunday procession, we heard this passage from the gospel of Matthew: “And when (Jesus) entered Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?” Who is Jesus? This is the most important question for us this Holy Week. Everything revolves around it: “Who is this?” We will hear many answers to this question during Holy Week. What answer will we give? God is waiting.
The crowd following Jesus into Jerusalem gave this answer: “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Why would they refer to Jesus as a prophet. The prophet Isaiah just gave us a list of the most prominent characteristics of a prophet. He speaks on behalf of God and interprets what God wants. He suffers for his prophetic mission, but he will not be deterred. This is what many saw in Jesus. He spoke with a well-trained tongue to rouse us from our torpor. He did not turn back or rebel against divine providence, even under persecution. Jesus’ determination is like a rock when it comes to completing his mission. The crowd could see these characteristics in Jesus. But eventually they could see that he was more than a prophet. He was the mysterious Servant of the Lord, the origin of all prophets. They have all been stamped with his image. No wonder the whole city was shaken.
The early Church recorded its own answer in the Letter to the Philippians: Jesus is fully a man, but he is also equal to God. The hymn points to this identity: “Although he was in the form of God…” Bue even more, he shows his divinity by his willingness to empty himself of all the honors of God because of his love for his Father’s plan: “… (he) did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.” Here we are immersed in the depths of the Holy Trinity. Jesus voluntarily unites our human nature with his divinity in perfect harmony with his Father’s will. He will overcome our revolt against the God by his obedience, something we could not do on our own. The Holy Spirit effects this emptying by bringing about the conception of Jesus in the womb of his virgin mother. He prepares a body in which Jesus can carry out the Father’s work, taking upon himself our guilt and removing it by his obedience. That is why God so highly exalted him.
Finally, the gospel provides another answer to the all-important question of who Jesus is: He is a man like us with all the human emotions and affections that we feel but without sin. The scene in the garden of Gethsemane reveals this clearly. Jesus trembles at his approaching death. He longs for human companionship and support. In his deepest moments of anguish, he asks his three disciples to remain alert and watch with him, imploring their support as his friends. But they fall asleep. He bore this human disappointment, not once but three times, urging his friends to rouse themselves. He needed their love and support at this hour. This loss of human, and even paternal support, was crushing. In the end with human resignation, all he can say is, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Get up, let us go. Look, my betrayer is at hand.”
As we continue our journey through Holy Week, we will hear more answers to the question “Who is this?” Who is this prophet, this emptied one, this man whose heart felt the bitter disappointment of friends who could not watch with him one hour? The Church invites us to ponder all this today and give our answer to the question, “Who is this?” answer the question for ourselves. It is the most important question we face in life.
The will of God often appears repulsive, but faith enables us to see it as it really is. If we live by faith we shall judge things very differently from the way people do who rely only on the evidence of their senses and so remain unaware of the priceless treasure hidden under appearances.
JEAN-PIERRE DE CAUSSADE Abandonment to Divine Providence
God's Fatherly love flows over a man as God created him. That is to say over a man that God created free, because for Him only a love freely given possesses worth. But because he is free, man is also fragile. It is this man that the Father in His love leads gradually across the scheme of time toward complete fulfillment. This is the whole mystery of divine teaching, of the progressive education of humanity. This man, that God created in order to heap him with His gifts, has closed himself to God in his thirst for independence. That is why he needs to be saved—that is, to be restored to his integrity.
JEAN DANIELOU God’s Life In Us
There are souls who seek solitude merely in order to find themselves: there are others who seek it so that they may give themselves. Still, it remains to be lived! Happy those who know how to put their whole soul into all they do. Because they are giving themselves, they will be able to bear much suffering, but their happiness will exceed their suffering, since the gift of self is the source and condition of life, and therefore of spiritual growth and joy. Go on, then, giving yourself: go on suffering… seek your joy in that precious suffering that the gift of self entails. God who became man new no more excellent way than this when he was on earth.
AN ANONYMOUS CARTHUSIAN They Speak by Silences
If God at times seems to be slow in responding, it is because he is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. We well know that the long-awaited gift is all the more precious for the delay in it's being granted… Ask, seek, insist. Through this asking and seeking you will be better prepared to receive God's gift when it comes. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for his greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart.
ST. AUGUSTINE
When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practice, covering their faces and afraid to move or think, unless they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God, since they think it consists in such things as these. No. Our Lord expects works from us! If you see someone sick whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; have compassion on her; if she is in pain, feel it as if it were your own, and when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of our will with the will of God. If you possess fraternal charity, I assure you that you will attain the union I have described.
ST. TERESA OF JESUS