SO, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?
"She did not know it was Jesus." |
Albert Holtz, OSB is a Benedictine monk of Newark Abbey, Newark, NJ. He teaches New Testament in the monastery's inner-city prep school. He has served as master of novices, retreat master for Benedictine communities around the US & is currently Oblate Director. He is the author of Downtown Monks, Street Wisdom, Pilgrim Road, From Holidays to Holy Days & Walking in Valleys of Darkness: A Benedictine Journey through Troubled Times.
"She did not know it was Jesus." |
During the Easter season, the lectionary takes us on a journey through the Acts of the apostles every day at mass. We hear all about the very earliest preaching in the church, and how the first Christian communities were formed and grew, spreading outward from Jerusalem.
So I found it interesting that two gospel passages to the end of this week invited us to turn our gaze back toward Jesus in a particular way.
These two “Acts of Jesus”, it seems to me, offer a perfect balance to the emphasis on the "Acts of the Apostles" and of the other early Christians that we hear about in the first reading in the lectionary at daily mass.
In both of these gospel episodes, Jesus is in total command of the situation:
he takes charge of feeding five thousand people with five little loaves of bread,and overcomes the power of the strong wind to bring his disciples safely to shore.
I have been comforted and encouraged by the powerful presence of the risen Lord. Let us pray that we may all be able to hand over all of our troubles to the Risen One who can work such wonders in the lives of those who trust on him.
This Sunday’s gospel passage makes sure that we see the full meaning of Easter for our lives.
The passage begins with a rather humorous understatement: “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” But the important point, it seems to me, is this: how often do you or I ourselves “see the Lord?” Do you see him easily in the folks around you? In people who need your help? And in people who you find difficult to deal with? It seems to me that this Sunday we are being invited to “rejoice” when we see the Lord in everyone around us.Here's a good Easter question: How do you see your task as an apostle? What is it that Jesus may be expecting you to do as a follower of his?
Then, as if to emphasize that the risen Jesus is serious about sending us out into the world, John tells us that he then “breathes on them, and says 'receive the Holy Spirit'.” This assures the apostles - and us - that we are now equipped for the task of apostles.Easter, then, is not just about Jesus, it is very much about you and me, and our lives as Christians.
May the grace of this holy season, help us to recognize the risen Lord in our midst, and to build up the Kingdom on earth as his apostles.
Last year's post for Palm Sunday still holds a lot of messages for me personally, so I'm posting it for my own benefit. I hope that it may be a blessing for you as well. Let's be sure to pray for one another during this holiest of weeks.
Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory! (Ps. 24)
Tomorrow’s Palm Sunday celebration, when the church remembers and reenacts Jesus’s entrance into the holy city of Jerusalem, centers our attention on Jerusalem, where all of the action of Holy Week and Easter comes to a head.
Early this morning I started thinking about Jesus' entering the gate, not of the holy city, Jerusalem, but of my heart. I know that sometimes my heart is like a walled city with all its gates securely closed. But Jesus wants desperately to enter my heart and dwell there. Fortunately, our loving Savior has lots of different ways of getting past my defenses. And He uses them all the time.
Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!
At other times He approaches the gate in the guise of someone who can use my help, whether that's simply a smile or a good word, or something that requires me to go out of my way for that person. If I have the grace to see that this is Jesus asking to enter my heart, then I can empathize with this person and let him or her past the gates of my heart.
Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!
Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!
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There are two requirements, though, if I expect Jesus to slip into my heart like that. First I cannot be living blindfolded, with my heart safely secured against the world, with the gates locked. I have to at least be watching at the gate.
Lift up your heads, eternal gates, let him enter the king of glory!
Second, I need to be looking for the presence of Jesus all the time. It's easy enough to see Him in the beautiful and joyful experiences that are part of my life. But what about those painful, ugly experiences
My Easter faith assures me that out of defeat comes victory, out of sadness comes joy, and out of death comes eternal life. This belief is what lets me recognize the presence of the Lord in my life in all sorts of people, places, and things. as a Christian I expect to find Jesus in the midst of every negative experience. In other words, if I am experiencing Good Friday in my life today, then, the Great News is that Easter Sunday is coming!
So, let us go forth to welcome the king of glory into our lives, singing “Hosanna to the son of David!“
My hour has not yet come |
He uses that phrase a couple of times in his gospel. First, we remember the scene at Cana when his mother asks him to solve the problem of the wine running out, and he explains “my hour has not yet come.”
Then, in verses skipped in the editing of Friday’s passage, from John Chapter 7, when “his brothers” encourage him to go up to Jerusalem, he replies “my time is not yet here;” and in the following verse he explains to them “I am not going up to this feast, because my time has not yet been fulfilled.”
And then the verse in Friday’s gospel, “no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.”
In each of these passages, the same word shows up in the original Greek: oupo, a very common adverb meaning: “not yet.”As ordinary as the word oupo, “not yet” may be, it is crucially important in all the passages we just heard: To say that the hour has NOT YET arrived indicates that eventually the hour WILL arrive.
It implies that Jesus' life is following the plan, but as of yet not all the stages of that plan have occurred. But they will. Christ’s earthly life is following a trajectory, heading in a single direction: it has significance, it has meaning.
And if that’s the case, then we who have Christ living in us and who are living in Christ, we are also living out that plan, following that same trajectory. This is especially important for you and me to remember when things are going badly. In times of pain and hopelessness we can hold onto that little word oupo , “not yet,” that assures us that no matter what things may look like, our lives are heading in a certain meaningful direction, and therefore, everything in our lives has meaning, even and especially the seemingly bad parts.
Father, the hour has come |
Each year during Holy Week and Easter, we celebrate the “hour,” we remind ourselves how the story turns out: Christ’s passion and death are oupo, not yet the end of the story. We know that the Easter mystery does not end on Good Friday: we live in the assurance that Sunday is coming.
The idea of oupo, “not yet” disappears early on Easter morning, when Christ is finally raised to a new life, and then in the ascension is brought to the fullness of glory at his Father's right hand.
And we who are still suffering here in this vale of tears are on our way to join him there. It's just that our own hour of glory has not yet come.
A final thought: Lots of times when when it seems that "God didn't answer your prayer," the Lord did in fact give an answer to your request -- the answer was oupo.
Oupo -- Not yet!
In this morning’s gospel we heard Jesus tell his disciples,
“And just as Moses lifted up [hupsoō] the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up [hupsoō] so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”
I’[d like to offer some thoughts about the Greek verb hupsoō, “to lift up.”
But John uses it in its literal sense in this morning’s gospel when referring to a scene from the book ofNumbers In which Moses fashions a bronze serpent so that the Israelites who are being punished by being bitten by "fiery serpents" can gaze on the bronze figure and be healed.
This is what Jesus is referring to when he says, “Moses lifted up [hupsoō] the serpent in the desert” (John. 3:14a).
This literal use of “to lift up” in the Old Testament provides John with exactly the image he needs to express Christ’s being physically “lifted up” on the cross: he writes “And just as Moses lifted up [hupsoō] the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up [hupsoō] so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Does this “being lifted up” refer to Christ’s being literally lifted up on the cross, or to his finally being lifted up in glory to the right hand of God? Or does it refer to both at the same time?
John’s deliberate ambiguity points up the mysterious nature of the crucifixion and of all human suffering.
But he also gives us a central insight about human suffering later in his gospel when he writes that by being lifted up on the cross Christ “draws all to himself” (Jn 12:32-33):
Calvary is just the first step in a process.
After being “lifted up” onto the cross Jesus will then be “lifted up” out of death by his Father and finally raised on high to sit at the right hand of the Father.
And – here is the crucial point -- we too are to be lifted up along with him as he draws us all to himself!
And so, Christ’s cross becomes the very means by which all of us, too, are lifted to salvation.
Suffering is a mysterious but somehow an integral part of this ceaseless upward movement of divine love.
So, let us pray that we may be blessed with the eyes of faith when we look on our troubled world – just as when we look upon a crucifix.
With those eyes and with the help of John’s beautiful image, we may be able to see that we and our dark valleys, and the whole world and its struggles, are continuously being “lifted up” by Christ in that single inevitable heavenward motion when all creation has been transformed, and every tear wiped away, and when every evil has been overcome and every pain forgotten amid the eternal joys of heaven.