Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

Christ is Risen!  Yes, He is truly Risen!

An Upper Room?

Truth?  Cross?

Now, an Empty tomb?

For the last three days, this is what has attracted our attention.  So, how do we make any sense of it?  In all reality, only in faith.  But, the faith of a Christian is not faith in an idea or a concept that can measured or found under a microscope.  The faith of a Christian is in the living person of Jesus Christ who is a real today as he was in that Upper Room, on Calvary and who left that tomb.

With the eyes of faith:

The Upper Room is the place where He gave us the very gift of Himself in the Eucharist and the mandate of discipleship:  serve each other

The Cross is the eternal sign that all darkness is destroyed.  There is always mercy and forgiveness.  It is in the Cross we find the true meaning of Love:  true love is to sacrifice oneself for another who is friend or stranger, sinner or saint, poor or rich:  for all people.

The Empty tomb is the sign of the truth that Jesus conquered the power of death.  He overcame the grave and it has no power on those who faith in Him.  When we come face to face with the tomb, as sad as it is and as bad as we feel, our friend Jesus stands right next to us.  He lets us know we are not alone and death is conquered.  He is our Hope.  He is our Light.  He is the Love that conquered death.

The mystery of this holy day is that our friend Jesus who loves us so much that he died and rise of us….

just think of that, Jesus died for you……Jesus rose for you…..for each one of us.

He freely did this and only asks one thing in return……Love each other in the same way.  Like Him, our love cannot be contingent on who the person is; he commands us to love all people no matter who they are.

Loving this way means we encounter the Cross and struggle, ours and others, but we also the empty Tomb promises victory and hope. We encounter sin, but also forgiveness We will know defeat and pain, but also victory and healing We will come face to face with death, and find Life eternal, Jesus our Risen Lord.

Like the man born blind who eyes were touched by Jesus with mud and spit, may our eyes be opened to see with eyes of faith.  The grace of this Easter is the grace of faith to see the powerful Love of God in Jesus Himself and in the mystery of His life

So, now with eyes of faith is all makes sense

An Upper Room: the gift of Sell and Service The Cross: the truth of God’s self-giving Love

The Empty Tomb:  Life and Hope

Now, it all makes sense!

Christ is Risen!   Yes, He is truly Risen!

This Holy Week is a contrast of emotions.   We who have so much are told to be slaves and wash another’s feet.  We are filled with joy at the coming of the Messiah; but filled with dread when we must proclaim our faith to others.  We must confront the apostle Peter in ourselves and realize we have the potential to deny Jesus.  Sadly, we all must see the Judas in us; that part of us that will betray Jesus and others because of our selfish motivations.  This week is seeing in the Passover Meal, not the sacrifice of a bull on Sinai or a Lamb roasted and bread made in a hurry to flee, we are to see that the Lamb is Jesus himself who offers himself for our sake.  He  commands us to enter into this sacrificial mystery every time we gather and take bread that becomes His Body and share a cup that is His Blood.  Such simple realities become the Divine Mystery; a Meal celebrating the freedom of a people from slavery becomes the Meal that is the memorial of what Jesus did to free us from the slavery of death; a share in the  Sacrifice that frees us from the slavery that Adam and Eve trapped us in because of their disobedience in the garden of Eden.

This week we climb a hill, not to see a glorious Christ, but a suffering and Crucified Lord.  In Him, we see not a criminal or outcast, but every poor person who is suffering, every abused child who cries for safety, every victim of addiction, every one enslaved in human trafficking, everyone in a prison, the person trapped in a mental illness, every suffering person in the world…..on that hill, all humanity is drawn to Him and freed….every human person is washed with the love that poured from His side as blood and water.

However, if Golgotha was the end of the story, then this week would not be a Holy Week.  We go to the Upper Room, the Garden, the trial, Golgotha, and the tomb that was sealed knowing the end of the story:  Early on the first day of the week, the holy women went and found that all suffering and pain ends in hope, all sin that is confessed and admitted ends in forgiveness, the death itself is destroyed and life restored. 

         May this Holy Week be an encounter with our crucified and risen Lord.