Easter – Page 3

The Pope’s Regina Coeli address: the Easter sacraments Easter are an enormous source of strength for renewal

Pope Francis makes direct connections between what believe and how we live the sacred Liturgy and the sacraments. It is the consistent teaching of Scripture and the Church that the practice of prayer, personal and liturgical (that is, what makes for a vital relationship with God) necessarily spills over to being an alive Catholic. The connection he’s making is consistent with what say in liturgical theology about the “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi” tradition: the law of prayer (and sacraments) tells us what we believe and how we live.

For the 50 days of Easter when the pope gives a teaching it is called the “Regina Coeli Address” but during the rest of the year it is called “Angelus Address” because during Eastertide we pray the Regina Coeli. The Address:

Happy Easter to you all! Thank you for coming today, in such large numbers, to share the joy of Easter, the central mystery of our faith. Let us pray that the power of the resurrection of Christ might reach everyone – especially those who suffer – and every place that is in need of trust and hope.

Christ has conquered evil fully and finally, but it is up to us, to people in every age, to embrace this victory in our lives and in the realities of history and society. For this reason it seems important to point out that today we ask God in the liturgy: “O God, who give constant increase to your Church by new offspring, grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives to the Sacrament they have received in faith.” (Collect for Monday in the Octave of Easter).

Indeed, the Baptism that makes us children of God, and the Eucharist that unites us to Christ, must become life. That is to say: they must be reflected in attitudes, behaviors, actions and choices. The grace contained in the Sacraments Easter is an enormous source of strength for renewal in personal and family life, as well as for social relations. Nevertheless, everything passes through the human heart: if I allow myself to be reached by the grace of the risen Christ, if I let that grace change for the better whatever is not good in me, [to change whatever] might do harm to me and to others, then I allow the victory of Christ to affirm itself in in my life, to broaden its beneficial action. This is the power of grace! Without grace we can do nothing – without grace we can do nothing! And with the grace of Baptism and Holy Communion can become an instrument of God’s mercy – that beautiful mercy of God.

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Urbi et Orbi 2013: God’s mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, Pope teaches

The Urbi et Orbi address, 2013, of the Bishop of Rome and Roman Pontiff, Pope Francis.

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, Happy Easter!

What a joy it is for me to announce this message: Christ is risen! I would like it to go out to every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons…

Most of all, I would like it to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this Good News: Jesus is risen, there is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil! Love has triumphed, mercy has been victorious!

We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom.

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Easter: Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present, is projected towards the future

Easter is yet again unfolded anew in our lives right now! Here is Pope Francis homily for the great and holy Vigil of Easter at the Vatican Basilica, 2013. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead as He said is a terrifying event in any person’s life. As His Holiness said in his homily, “Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us.” This newness, this new humanity given to us by the resurrected Lord, is a beautiful reminder that all is redeemed by the One who created us and Loves us now.

The key to the Christian journey, to the building of the Kingdom, to the witnessing to your hope is the openness to have the liturgical anamnesis, the awareness of grace being operative, of God’s activity in life, my life, right now; the phrase Francis uses frequently is, “you won’t be disappointed,” the same one John Paul and Benedict used before him so many times.

The question is, can we be open enough to accept the surprises, are you willing not to be disappointed when confronted by a life of grace that contradicts an existence full of nihilism, skepticism, and boredom?

There are several wonderful points the Pope made, not least is this one that reminds me of Father Giussani:

They are asked to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

Why do you seek the living among the dead? He isn’t here — He is risen!

The homily:

In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises; we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us!

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Blessed Easter!

Victimae paschali laudes

immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves:

Christus innocens Patri

reconciliavit peccatores.

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The Holy Spirit… the most precious gift, that personal love

We are fast approaching the great feast of the Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon those who follow Christ. This feast, like all others we observe in the liturgical life of the Church, is not about an event of 2000+ years ago but an experience of great proportions evidenced today. Yes, we remember liturgically the first event (anamnesis) but it is a remembrance that spills into today’s context. Attentive to our sacred Liturgy, we see that one piece of Scripture interprets another, one liturgical observance of Sunday (or daily) sheds light on another. Pentecost is coming in two weeks and last Sunday the Church gave us a foreshadowing of a future gift. Below is an excerpt of a homily delivered by an American Benedictine monk in Italy giving us “taste” of what’s coming. These paragraphs are presented for our lectio.

The departure of Jesus in terms of his bodily presence, therefore, is not a reason to be sad; instead, it is a cause of great joy. And this is exactly what the Lord promises when he says: “I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7).

Christ sends us the Counselor, that is the Holy Spirit, in union with his Father. In fact, the Holy Spirit is the special promise of the Father (cf. Acts 2:33; Eph 1:13; Lk 24:49), the gift which allows us to know him more intimately, “for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10). The good fathers of this world show their goodness towards their children giving them the most precious gift, that of personal love. The Lord says to earthly fathers: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk 11:13). Given that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (Jas 1:17), as we heard in today’s epistle [May 9, 2012], it is clear that the best gift that the Father can bestow is that of his Holy Spirit, through whom the Father and the Son are able to dwell in us (cf. Jn 14:23).

How eager, therefore, should we be to receive this Spirit! O how we should implore the Father for this perfect gift! We should say, therefore: Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Father Basil Nixen, OSB

9 May 2012
Monastery of Saint Benedict

Norcia, Italy

O day of resurrection!

Let us beam with God’s own
pride!

Let everyone embrace in joy!

Let us warmly greet those we meet and treat
them all like brothers,

even those who hate us, for in His rising from the dead
is all grace and pardon!

Let all the earth resound with this song:

Christ is
risen from the dead, conquering death by death,

and on those in the grave
bestowing life!!!

The Christian … like the Easter Candle

Last week, during his Easter vigil homily, Pope Benedict XVI said: …the Church presents the mystery of light using a unique and very humble symbol: the Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives himself and so bestows the great light. Secondly, we should remember that the light of the candle is a fire. Fire is the power that shapes the world, the force of transformation. And fire gives warmth. Here too the mystery of Christ is made newly visible. Christ, the light, is fire, flame, burning up evil and so reshaping both the world and ourselves.” St. Catherine of Siena once said: “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire.” Bishop Roman’s last hours were spent in the same way he spent his entire life: evangelizing, preaching the gospel. He was what he should have been: a friend of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the exile and the immigrant. He was a friend to us all – because he was first of all and above all a friend of Jesus. He was light; he was fire. His passion for evangelization, for catechesis, was never about making people follow him but rather it was about leading them to Jesus.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski

from the Funeral homily for Bishop Agustín Román

April 14, 2012

Christ risen is constantly present

Today
Eucharist means the Risen Lord is constantly present, Christ who continues to
give Himself to us, calling us to participate in the Banquet of His Body and
Blood. From the full communion with Him comes every other element of the life
of the Church, in the first place the communion among the Faithful, the
commitment to proclaim and give witness to the Gospel, the ardor of charity
towards all, especially toward the poor and the smallest.

Pope Benedict XVI

The Pope hits on something significant in the life of the Christian: keeping in front of oneself that God has not abandoned humanity AND that He thirsts for us, He desires to be in relationship with us. In our daily living the baptized seek the face of God (as it is spoken of in the Scriptures) and to recognize Christ in the faces of the people around us and in creation.

This week we’ve heard some beautiful readings of the resurrected Lord thus giving perspective on His previous preaching about the Cross. The resurrection makes things clearer, hopeful. The resurrected Christ laughs in the face of death. Now, He is present to us not merely in one location but now in all places and constantly through the Eucharist. The Incarnation is now a recognizable Divine Fact that walking and talking could not manage. By action of the Holy Spirit Christ is present to all who call on his Name. And we ought to give witness to this fact.

Christ’s resurrection means that now our humanity is elevated to the divine

Addressing all Christians through the mouth of Saint Paul, the Spirit cries out: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).

For all its brevity, that sentence contains the most amazing assertion. In effect, it signifies not only that Christ has risen and that we ourselves shall one day rise with him, but that we have already risen with Christ through our baptism. The whole mystery of what it is to be a Christian subsists in that statement. Apparently, our human condition remains unchanged; yet Christ’s resurrection has already accomplished its transforming work in the hidden world of our souls. Christians are now only waiting for the outward manifestation of what has already been achieved in Christ. Saint Paul, in fact, goes on to say: “Your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you too will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:3-4).

The resurrection, therefore, means that here and now our humanity is elevated to the inaccessible realm of the divine. The resurrection is the Good News par excellence, the glorious destiny, far above its own nature, to which the Father’s love has called the human race in his only Son through the gift of the Spirit.

All this only possible through the action of God. In Christ, God comes down to us, takes our carnal nature, and raises it above itself in order to carry it into the intimate presence of the Father, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Thus the resurrection of Christ constitutes the first-fruits of our own resurrection. With Christ, part of our humanity is already taken up into the abyss of the Godhead. According to the metaphor employed by the writer to the Hebrews, Christ is like an anchor, which instead of being let down in the depths of the sea, is cast up into the heights of heaven (cf. Hebrews 6:19). He is the guarantee of our hope, because that hope has already been fulfilled in him.

Jean Cardinal Danielou, S.J. (1905-1974)

Ascension Sequence: Postquam hostem et inferna

One of my missions in life is to help restore the use of liturgical sequences and the observance of octaves. The Liturgy of the Church is not only and primarily the worship of the Triune God but it also passes down to us what we believe and teaches us how to live. Well, I am not unique in wanting the restoration of sequences and octaves as others have similar ambitions. Care to join the “restore the sequence” effort? My friend Friar Charles at A Minor Friar reminded me of this work and he gives needed encouragement

Many of the sequences were excised, really abolished, from the Missal in the years following the Council of Trent and they were further reduced in number with the Missal of Paul VI. The 16th century redaction of the sequences seems to be based on Protestant criticism of medieval exegesis of Scripture and poetry in the Liturgy (sound familiar?). The Missal of Pope Paul made too many things optional and gave too many options; as you know, when human beings make things optional they become proscribed. Sadly, sequences are not in the liturgical framework of priests, liturgists or liturgical musicians; they’re barely on the agenda of seminary courses in sacred Liturgy. Even the patrimony of the religious orders have no interest in liturgical poems of their venerable founders.

The Solemnity of the Ascension had a sequence –a liturgical poem set to music– but it was jettisoned in the revision of the missal written by Adam of St Victor in the 12th century (d. c. 1177). Some have said that Adam of St Victor was the greatest poet of the Middle Ages (Gueranger) and the greatest Latin poet ever (John M. Neale). This is quite a claim of Digby S. Wrangham to make, but I’ll leave it to others to parse the distinctions. Wrangham’s collection of Adam’s texts is noteworthy.

Adam of St Victor’s text was translated into English by Digby S. Wrangham (which follows):

Postquam hostem et inferna Satan and the realms
infernal

Spoliavit, ad superna Having spoiled, to joys supernal

Christus redit
gaudia; Christ returneth back once more:

Angelorum ascendenti As His upward way
he wendeth,

Sicut olim descendenti As before, when he descendeth,

Parantur
obsequia. Angels set them to adore.

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