Easter – Page 2

Good Shepherd Sunday

On the 4th Sunday of Easter in the Novus Ordo liturgy the Church reads the gospel of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Here are some words from a sermon by St. Peter Chrysologus:

“We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” In many passages we are told of the joy with which the Shepherd will come from heaven to recall his wandering sheep to life-giving pastures—sheep who have grown weak and sick through feeding on noxious weeds. “Enter his gates,” says the psalmist, “giving thanks.” Praise is the only way to enter the gates of faith. “Let us enter his courts to the accompaniment of song, declaring his greatness, praising and blessing his holy name.” It is through that name that we are saved, it is at the sound of that name that all in heaven and on earth and beneath the earth shall bend the knee, and every creature confess his love for the Lord his God.

50 days of savoring the Easter Presence

Here is this year’s Easter Poster from Communion and Liberation, the concrete place in the Church where I adhere to Christ.

I wonder were I will savor the Presence of Christ in the 50 days of Easter.

Mutual prayers.

Easter Monday: newness of life

Easter Monday brings with it a new emphasis changing the old into new: old leaven is out, and new leaven brought in; new gifts recognized and offered to the Lord for the work of building up the Church. “Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough.” (I Corinthians 5:7) Easter Monday is the second day of a new beginning.

At Easter we sing this verse: “This is the day The Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice.” As people baptized into the Resurrection we can say: “You and I are the people the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice.”

Easter manifests God’s love that is more powerful than death. It’s a liberation: Easter means death no longer enslaves us. Our early Christians saw the light of Jesus Christ bursting forth from the tomb, a light that shatters of death’s bond.

The Resurrection from the dead is God’s great gift of salvation given to us. One theologian writes that the “Resurrection, God ratifies, sums up, and valorizes his material creation. Therefore, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is not just about him. It’s about all those who will participate in his Mystical Body, the Church, and it’s about all of matter. In raising Jesus bodily from the dead, the Father is raising all of matter to new life.”

The Resurrection of Jesus from the dead speaks to us as been given a New Creation radically changing the sin of Adam into a new heaven and a new earth, a new body: we are living creatures living within the life of God. In Christ Jesus we are human beings with an alive, flourishing humanity. Christians believe that heaven is not just a spiritual space that our souls go following death. It’s first a new creation on earth with the doors of heaven opened unto new life with the Holy Trinity.

Getting a glimpse of Pascha: Lazarus being untied

Walking through Lent the Church gives us key glimpses, that is, tastes through the liturgical narrative leading to Pascha (Easter).

The icon shows Lazarus being untied of his burial shroud. In fact, this metaphor of being untied is key: the crucified and risen Lord unties us of our sin to live in freedom.

A hymn at Lenten Vespers is revealing:

“O Lord, while dwelling in the flesh on the other side of Jordan, Thou hast foretold that the sickness of Lazarus would not end in death, but that it had come to pass for Thy glory, O our God. Glory to Thy mighty acts and Thine all-sovereign power, for Thou hast destroyed death in Thy great mercy and Thy love for mankind.”

Holy Saturday from an Orthodox perspective

Holy Saturday is one of the mis-understood days the sacred Triduum. As a church body, we just don’t have a firm grasp of what Mother Church has to say and experience. Several theologians, for example, Popes John Paul and Benedict, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Richard John Neuhaus have all tried to focus our attention on what God has done for us on Holy Saturday. Father Alexander Schmemann, an orthodox liturgical theologian and priest, is one of my favorite liturgical authors. Sadly, he died of cancer many years ago, but his work continues to bear much fruit, as I hope you will appreciate by reading the following entry. Since today is Holy Saturday for the Orthodox Church, I am offering for our meditation (a review?) the events of our salvation.

Great and Holy Saturday is the day on which Christ reposed in the tomb. The Church calls this day the Blessed Sabbath.

“The great Moses mystically foreshadowed this day when he said:

God blessed the seventh day.

This is the blessed Sabbath

This is the day of rest,

on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works….” (Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday)

By using this title the Church links Holy Saturday with the creative act of God. In the initial account of creation as found in the Book of Genesis, God made man in His own image and likeness. To be truly himself, man was to live in constant communion with the source and dynamic power of that image: God. Man fell from God. Now Christ, the Son of God through whom all things were created, has come to restore man to communion with God. He thereby completes creation. All things are again as they should be. His mission is consummated. On the Blessed Sabbath He rests from all His works.

THE TRANSITION

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day–Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another–Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death that Christ continues to effect triumph.

Continue reading Holy Saturday from an Orthodox perspective

The Time of the Holy Spirit is now

In the days leading up to the great feast of Pentecost which we celebrate next week, it seems right that we look to what we know and believe about the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate sent to us by the Trinity.

We need to work in a concerted way to educate our religious sense on the gifts of the Holy Spirit that were given in the sacraments of Initiation. The Holy Spirit is not talked about too often in the teaching of the faith and you rarely hear of the Spirit in homilies. I would love to see a parish provide as part of their formation of adults an in-depth course on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

It is noted by many that we lack a firm grasp of how the Holy Spirit leads and guides each one of us, and how the Spirit is the agent in the sacred Liturgy (Mass and the Divine Office). The Paulist Fathers’ evangelization work has mentioned recently that “Until we appropriate the Holy Spirit more fully in our Catholic consciousness, we will not have the spirituality to do the reaching out, welcoming, inviting, and sharing that are essential parts of our Catholic life and mission. Father Isaac Hecker, Servant of God, founded the Paulist Fathers will a strong spirituality of the Holy Spirit. Part of his cause for canonization might well include a greater awareness of the Spirit in our American/Canadian Catholic lives.”

Father Isaac Hecker is one of America’s priests who took evangelization and adult faith formation seriously. Let’s take inspiration from him.

New Haven Orthodox Christians celebrate Pascha

The beauty and triumph of the Lord Jesus over death by His own death on the cross and subsequent resurrection from the dead is sadly celebrated by Christians on different dates. The divisions are scandalous. Western Christians had Easter on March 31, and Orthodox Christians will have their Easter, or Pascha, tonight. I hope, one day soon, all Christians can witness to the Lord’s resurrection on the same day. As Jesus said, ‘that they be one.”

In the meantime, New Haven’s Greek Orthodox community is small yet lively at Saint Basil’s Church. Connecticut has a rich history of Eastern Christianity, one that still needs to be told and appreciated. Ed Stannard of The New Haven Register wrote a story on the festivity and hope of Saint Basil’s.

Christians follow a messiah who loved us more than himself

Today, we are observing the 5th Sunday of Easter (John 13:31-35).

“‘I give you a new commandment’, said Jesus: ‘love one another.’ But how, we may ask, could he call this commandment new? Through Moses, he had said to the people of old, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’…He showed the novelty of his command and how far the love he enjoined surpassed the old conception of mutual love by going on immediately to add: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ To understand the full force of these words, we have to consider how Christ loved us.’…The law commanded people to love their brothers and sisters as they love themselves, but our Lord Jesus Christ loved us more than himself. He who was one in nature with God the Father and his equal would not have descended to our lowly estate, nor endured in his flesh such a bitter death for us, nor submitted to the blows given him by his enemies, to the shame, the derision, and all the other sufferings that could not possibly be enumerated; nor, being rich, would have he become poor, had he not loved us far more than himself. It was indeed something new for love to go as far as that!”

Saint Cyril of Alexandria

Catholics are reborn and have a new humanity through baptism

The second reading in the daily Office of Readings are generally stunning. Most focus on the paschal mysteries, that is, the Mysteries of Easter that we live. As Catholics, are we reborn in the Spirit? You bet we are. It is the consistent teaching of the Church and those we call “the Fathers of the Church.” Don’t be fooled: Protestants aren’t the only ones reborn in baptism (cf. Creed). Today’s reading is from the first apology in defense of the Christians by Saint Justin, martyr.

Our new birth, a new humanity, is a baptismal regeneration

Through Christ we received new life and we consecrated ourselves to God. I will explain the way in which we did this. Those who believe what we teach is true and who give assurance of their ability to live according to that teaching are taught to ask God’s forgiveness for their sins by prayer and fasting and we pray and fast with them. We then lead them to a place where there is water and they are reborn in the same way as we were reborn; that is to say, they are washed in the water in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the whole universe, of our Savior Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit. This is done because Christ said: Unless you are born again you will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and it is impossible for anyone, having once been born, to re-enter his mother’s womb.

An explanation of how repentant sinners are to be freed from their sins is given through the prophet Isaiah in the words: Wash yourselves and be clean. Remove the evil from your souls; learn to do what is right. Be just to the orphan, vindicate the widow. Come, let us reason together, says the Lord. If your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as wool; if they are like crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if you do not heed me, you shall be devoured by the sword. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Continue reading Catholics are reborn and have a new humanity through baptism

Second Sunday of Easter: Thomas shows us the contours of God’s mercy

The Second Sunday of Easter continues the drama of the Resurrection that we first lived last week. Through liturgical history we’ve called today Quasimodo Sunday, Thomas Sunday, Dominica in albis, and Mercy Sunday. See this past post.

This music text tells the narrative:

Although the doors were closed,

Jesus appeared to his disciples.

He took away their fear and granted them peace.

Then He called Thomas and said to him:

“Why did you doubt My resurrection from the dead? Place your hand in My side; see My hands and My feet.

Through your lack of faith, everyone will come to know of My passion and My resurrection, and they will cry out with you:

My Lord and My God, glory to You!”

The perceived lack of faith Saint Thomas is really the invitation made to all of us to engage our freedom in a new way, and to allow our YES to be coherent before Mercy Himself.