Dom Prosper Gueranger:
After having glorified the Lamb
of God and the Passover by which our Lord destroyed our enemies, and
after having celebrated our deliverance by water and our entrance
into the Promised Land, let us now fix our respectful gaze on Him
whose triumph is prefigured by all these prodigies. So dazzling is
the glory that now beams from this Man-God that, like the Prophet of
Patmos, we will fall prostrate before Him. But He is so wonderful,
too, in His love that He will encourage us to enjoy the grand vision:
He will say to us, as He did to His disciples: “Fear not! I am the
First, and the Last, and alive, and was dead, and behold! I am living
forever and ever, and have the keys of death and of Hell”
(Apocalypse i. 17, 18.) Yes, He is now Master of death, which had
held Him captive. He holds in His hand the keys of Hell. These
expressions of Scripture signify that He has power over death and the
tomb — He has conquered them. Now the first use He makes of His
victory is to make us partakers of it. Let us adore His infinite
goodness and, in accordance with the wish of holy Church, let us
meditate today on the effects wrought in each one of us by the
mystery of the Pasch. Jesus says to His beloved disciples: “I am am
alive, and was dead.” The day will come when we also will
triumphantly say: “We are living, and we were dead!”
Death awaits us. It is daily
advancing towards us. We cannot escape its vengeance. The wages of
sin is death (Romans vi. 23). In these few words of Scripture we are
taught how death is not only universal, but even necessary, for we
have all sinned. This, however, does not make the law less severe.
Nor can we help seeing a frightful disorder in the violent separation
of soul and body which were united together by God Himself. If we
would truly understand death, we must remember that God made man
immortal: this will explain the instinctive dread we have of death —
a dread which only one thing can conquer, and that is the spirit of
sacrifice. In the death, then, of each one of us there is the
handiwork of sin, and consequently a victory won by Satan: no, there
would be a humiliation for our Creator Himself were it not that, by
sentencing us to this punishment, He satisfied His Justice. This is
man’s well-merited, but
terrible, condemnation. What can he hope for? Never to die? It would
be folly: the sentence is clear, and none may escape. Can he hope
that this body, which is to become first a corpse and then be turned
into a mere handful of dust, will one day return to life and be
re-united to the soul for which it was made? But who could bring
about the re-union of an immortal substance with one that was
formerly united with it but has now seemingly been annihilated? And
yet, man, this is to be your lot! You will rise again: that poor body
of yours which is to die, be buried, forgotten and humbled, will be
restored to life. Yes, it even now comes forth from the tomb in the
person of our Lord Jesus Christ: our future resurrection is
accomplished in His: it is today that we are made as sure of our
resurrection as we are of our death. This, too, makes part of our
glorious feast — our Pasch!
God did not, at the beginning,
reveal this miracle of His power and goodness: all He said to Adam
was: “In the sweat of your face will you eat bread, till you return
to the earth, out of which you were taken, for dust you are, and to
dust you will return” (Genesis iii. 19). Not a word, not an
allusion, which gives the culprit the least hope with reference to
that portion of himself which is thus doomed to death and the grave.
It was fitting that the ungrateful pride which had led man to rebel
against his Maker should be humbled. Later on, the great mystery was
revealed, at least partially. Four thousand years back, a poor
sufferer whose body was covered with ulcers speaks these words of
hope: “I know that my
Redeemer lives, and in the last day I will rise out of the earth. And
I will he clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see God:
this my hope is laid up in my bosom” (Job xix. 25‒27).
But in order that Job’s
hope might be realised, this Redeemer of whom he spoke had to come
down to this earth, give battle to death, feel its pang and finally
conquer it. He came at the time fixed by the divine decree: He came,
not indeed to prevent us from dying (for the sentence of God’s
justice was absolute), but to die Himself, and so take away from
death its bitterness and humiliation. Like those devoted physicians
who have been known to inoculate themselves with the virus of
contagion, our Jesus swallowed down death (1 Peter iii. 22), as the
Apostle forcibly expresses it. But the enemy’s
joy was soon at an end for the Man-God had risen, to die no more, and
by His Resurrection He won that same right for us.
Henceforth, then, we must see the
grave under a new aspect. The earth will receive these bodies of
ours, but only to yield them back again, just as she yields back the
hundredfold of the seed that was confided to her. Her great Creator
will at some future day bid her restore the deposit He entrusted to
her. The Archangel’s
trumpet will give the signal of His command and, in the twinkling of
an eye, the whole human race will rise up from the grave and proclaim
the final defeat of death. For the just it will be a Pasch — a
continuation of the Pasch we are now celebrating. Who could describe
the joy we will experience at such a meeting! Our soul after, it may
be, a separation of hundreds of years, united once more to that
essential part of her being, the body! She, perhaps, has been all
that time enjoying the Beatific Vision, but the whole man was not
there. Our happiness was not complete because that of the body was
wanting, and in the midst of the soul’s
rapturous felicity, there was a trace still left of the punishment to
which man was condemned when our First Parents sinned. Our merciful
God would not, now that His Son has opened the gates of Heaven, defer
till the general Resurrection the rewarding the souls of his elect
with the Vision, and yet, these elect have not their whole glory and
happiness until that Last Day comes and puts the last finish to the
mystery of man’s
redemption.
Jesus, our King and our Head,
wills that we His members will sing with Him the song that comes from
His own divine lips, and that each of us will say for all eternity:
“I am living, and I was dead!” Mary, who on the third day after
her death was united to her sinless body, longs to see her devoted
children united with her in heaven, but wholly and entirely. Soul and
body: and this will be, when the tomb has done its work of
purification. The holy Angels whose ranks are waiting to be filled up
by the elect among men are affectionately looking forward to that
happy day when the glorified bodies of the just will spring up, like
the loveliest of earth’s
flowers, to beautify the land of Spirits. One of their joys consists
in their gazing upon the resplendent bodies of Jesus and Mary — of
Jesus, who, even as man, is their King as well as ours, and of Mary,
whom they reverence as their Queen. What a feast day, then, will they
not count that, whereon we, their brothers and sisters, whose souls
have been long their companions in bliss, will revest the robe of
flesh, sanctified and fitted for union with our radiant souls! What a
canticle of fresh joy will ring through Heaven as it then receives
within itself all the grandeur and beauty of creation! The Angels who
were present at the Resurrection of Jesus were filled with admiration
at the sight of this body which was, indeed, of a lower nature than
themselves, but whose dazzling glory exceeded all the splendour of
the Angelic host together — will they not gladly hail our arrival,
after our resurrection? Will they not welcome us with fraternal
congratulations when they see us members as we are of this same
Risen Jesus, clad in the same gorgeous robe of glory as His, who is
their God? The sensual man never gives a thought to the eternal glory
and happiness of the body: he acknowledges the Resurrection of the
Flesh as an article of faith, but it is not an object of his hope. He
cares but for the present. Material, carnal pleasures being all he
aspires to, he considers his body as an instrument of
self-gratification which, as it lasts so short a time, must be the
quicker used. There is no respect in the love he bears to his body.
Hence he fears not to defile it, and after a few years of insult
which he calls enjoyment, it becomes the food of worms and
corruption. And yet, this sensual man accuses the Church of being an
enemy to the body! The Church that so eloquently proclaims its
dignity, and the glorious destiny that awaits it! He is the tyrant,
and a tyrant is ever an impudent calumniator. The Church warns us of
the dangers to which the body exposes the soul: she tells us of the
infectious weakness that came to the flesh by original sin. She
instructs us as to the means we should employ for making it serve
justice, unto sanctification, (Romans vi. 19), but far from
forbidding us to love the body, she reveals to us the truth which
should incite us to true charity — its being destined to an endless
glory and happiness. When lain on the bed of death, the Church
honours it with the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, fitting it for
immortality by anointing it with Holy Oil. She is present at the
departure of the soul from this the companion of her combats, and
from which she is to be separated till the Day of the General
Judgment. She respectfully burns incense over the body when dead,
for, from the hour of its Baptism, she has regarded it as something
holy, and to the surviving friends of her departed one, she addresses
these inspired words of consolation: “Be not sorrowful, even as
others, who have no hope” (Thessalonians iv. 12).
But what is this hope? That same
which comforted Job: “In my flesh, I will see my God!” Thus does
our holy Faith reveal to us the future glory of our body. Thus does
she encourage, by supernatural motives, the instinctive love borne by
the soul for this essential portion of our being. She unites together
the two dogmas — our Lord’s
Pasch, and the resurrection of our body. The Apostle assures us of
the close relation that exists between them, and says: “If Christ
he not risen again, your faith is vain; if the dead rise not again,
neither is Christ risen again” (1 Corinthians xv. 14, 17), so that
the Resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection seem to be parts of
one and the same truth. Hence, the sort of forgetfulness which is
nowadays so common, of this important dogma of the “Resurrection of
the Body,” is a sad proof of the decay of lively faith. Such people
believe in a future resurrection, for the Creed is too explicit to
leave room for doubt, but the hope which Job had is seldom the object
of their thoughts or desires. They say that what they are anxious
about, both for themselves and for those that are dear to them, is
what will become of the soul after this life: they do well to look to
this, but they should not forget what Religion teaches them regarding
the resurrection of the body. By professing it, they not only have a
fresh incentive to virtue, but they also render testimony to the
Resurrection of Jesus, by which He he gained victory over death both
for Himself and us. They should remember that they are in this world
only to confess, by their words and actions, the truths that God has
revealed. It is therefore not enough that they believe in the
immortality of the soul. The Resurrection of the Body must also be
believed and professed.
We find this article of our holy
faith continually represented in the Catacombs. Its several symbols
formed, together with the Good Shepherd, quite the favourite subject
of primitive Christian art. In those early ages of the Church when to
receive Baptism was an open breaking with the sensuality of previous
habits of life, this consoling dogma of the Resurrection of the Body
was strongly urged upon the minds of the neophytes. Any of them might
be called upon to suffer martyrdom: the thought of the future glory
that awaited their flesh inspired them with courage when the hour of
trial came. Thus we read so very frequently in the Acts of the
Martyrs, how, when in the midst of their most cruel torments they
declared that what supported them was the certain hope of the
Resurrection of the Body. How many Christians are there nowadays who
are cowardly in the essential duties of their state of life simply
because they never think of this important dogma of their faith!
The soul is more than the body,
but the body is an essential portion of our being. It is our duty to
treat it with great respect because of its sublime destiny. If we,
at present, chastise it and keep it in a state of subjection, it is
because its present state requires such treatment. We chastise it
because we love it. The martyrs and all the saints, loved their body
far more than does the most sensual voluptuary. They, by sacrificing
it, saved it. He, by pampering it, exposes it to eternal suffering.
Let us be on our guard: sensualism is akin to naturalism. Sensualism
will have it that there is no happiness for the body but such as this
present life can give and, with this principle, its degradation
causes no remorse: naturalism is that propensity we have to judge of
everything by mere natural light, whereas we cannot possibly know the
glorious future for which God has created us except by faith. If the
Christian, therefore, can see what the Son of God has done for our
bodies by the divine Resurrection we are now celebrating, and feel
neither love nor hope, he may be sure, that his faith is weak and, if
he would not lose his soul, let him, henceforth, be guided by the
word of God, which alone can teach him what he is now, and what he is
called to be hereafter.
Epistle – Acts viii. 26‒40
In those days an Angel of the
Lord spoke to Philip, saying “Arise, go towards the south, to the
way that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza: this is desert.” And
rising up, he went, and behold a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch, of great
authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge
over all her treasures, had come to Jerusalem to adore. And he was
returning, sitting in his chariot, and reading Isaiah the prophet.
And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go near, and join yourself to this
chariot.” And Philip running there, heard him reading the prophet
Isaiah, and he said, “Do you think that you understand what you
read?” Who said, “And how can I, unless some man shows me?” and
he desired that Philip would come up and sit with him. And the place
of the scripture which he was reading was this: “He was led as a
sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb without voice before his
shearer, he opened not his mouth. In humility his judgement was taken
away: his generation; who will declare; for his life will be taken
from the earth?” And the eunuch answering Philip said, “I beseech
you, of whom does the prophet speak this: of himself, or of some
other man?” Then Philip opening his mouth, and beginning at this
scripture; preached to him Jesus. And as they went on their way, they
came to a certain water and the eunuch said, “See here is water,
what hinders me from being baptised?” And Philip said, “If you
believe with all your heart, you may,” and he answering, said, “I
believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And he commanded the
chariot to stand still: and they went down into the water, both
Philip and the eunuch, and he baptised him. And when they had come
out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip, and the
eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip
was found in Azotus, and passing through, he preached the gospel to
all the cities till he came to Caesarea.
Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Gueranger:
The Church, by this passage from
the Acts of the Apostles, would remind her neophytes of the sublime
grace of their Baptism, and under what condition they have been
regenerated. God put the opportunity of salvation in their path, as
He sent Philip to the eunuch. He gave them a desire to know the truth
in the same manner as He inspired this servant of Queen Candace to
read what was to occasion his being instructed in the faith of
Christ. This pagan, had he chosen, might have received the
instructions of God’s
messenger with mistrust and indifference and so have resisted the
grace that was offered him, but no, he opened his heart, and faith
filled it. Our neophytes did the same: they were docile, and God’s
word enlightened them. They went on from light to light until, at
length, the Church recognised them as true disciples of the faith.
Then came the Feast of the Pasch, and this Mother of souls said to
herself: “Lo here is water — the water that purifies, the water
that issued from Jesus’
side when opened by the Spear — what hinders them from being
baptised? Having confessed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, they
were baptised as was the Ethiopian of our Epistle in the life-giving
waters: like him they are about to continue the journey of life,
rejoicing, for they are risen with Christ who has graciously
vouchsafed to associate the joy of their new birth with that of his
own triumph.
Gospel ‒
John xx. 11‒18
At that time, Mary stood outside
the sepulchre weeping. Now as she was weeping, she stooped down and
looked into the sepulchre and saw two Angels in white sitting, one at
the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid.
They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?” She said to them,
“Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they
have laid Him.” When she had said this, she turned herself back and
saw Jesus standing, and she knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus said to
her, “Woman, why do you weep? Who do you seek?” She, thinking it
was the gardener, said to him, “Sir, if you have taken him from
here, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turning, said to him, “Rabboni”
(which is to say, “Master”). Jesus said to her, “Do not touch
me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. But go to my brethren and
say to them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and
your God.” Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples, “I have
seen the Lord, and these things He said to me.”
Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Instead of putting before us any
of the apparitions related by the Gospel as having been made to His
Apostles by our Saviour after His Resurrection, the
Church reads to us the one with which Magdalene was honoured. Why
this apparent forgetting the very heralds and ambassadors of the New
Law? The reason is obvious. By thus honouring her, whom our Lord
selected as the Apostle of His Apostles, the Church would put before
us, in their full truth, the circumstances of the Day of the
Resurrection. It was through Magdalene and her companions that began
the Apostolate of the grandest mystery of the life of our Jesus upon
earth: they have every right, therefore, to be honoured today... God
is all-powerful, and delights in showing Himself in that which is
weakest. He is infinitely good and glorious in rewarding such as love
Him. This explains how it was that our Jesus gave to Magdalene and
her companions the first proofs of His Resurrection, and so promptly
consoled them. They were even weaker than the Bethlehem shepherds.
They were, therefore, the objects of a higher preference. The
Apostles, themselves, were weaker than the weakest of the earthly
powers they were to bring into submission. Hence, they too were
initiated into the mystery of the triumph of Jesus. But Magdalene and
her companions had loved their Master even to the Cross and in His
tomb, whereas the Apostles had abandoned Him. They therefore had a
better claim than the Apostles to the generosity of Jesus, and richly
did He satisfy the claim. Let us attentively consider the sublime
spectacle of the Church at this moment of her receiving the knowledge
of that Mystery which is the basis of her faith — the Resurrection.
Who, after Mary — in whom the light of faith never waned, and to
whom, as the sinless Mother, was due the first manifestation —
who, we ask, were the first to be illumined with that faith by which
the Church lives? They were Magdalene and her companions.
For
several hours this was the Little Flock on which Jesus looked with
complacency: little indeed, and weak in the world’s
estimation, but grand as being the noblest work of grace. Yet a short
time, and the Apostles will be added to the number. Yes, the whole
world will form a part of this elect group. The Church now sings
these words in every country of the earth: “Tell us, Mary, what you
saw on the way?” And Mary Magdalene tells the Church the Mystery:
“I saw the sepulchre of Christ, and the glory of Him that rose.”
Nor must we be surprised that women were the first to form, around
the Son of God, the Church of Believers — the Church resplendent
with the brightness of the Resurrection: it is the continuation of
that Divine Plan, the commencement of which we have already
respectfully studied. It was by woman that the work of God was marred
in the beginning. He willed that it should be repaired by woman. On
the day of the Annunciation we found the Second Eve making good by
her own obedience, the disobedience of the First, and now, at Easter,
God honours Magdalene and her companions in preference even to the
Apostles. We repeat it: these facts show us, not so much a personal
favour conferred on individuals, as the restoration of woman to her
lost dignity. “The woman,” says Saint Ambrose, “was the first
to taste the food of death. She is destined to be the first witness
of the Resurrection. By proclaiming this Mystery, she will atone for
her fault. Therefore is it, that she who, heretofore, had announced
sin to man, was sent by the Lord to announce the tidings of salvation
to men, and make known to them His grace.” Others of the Holy
Fathers speak in the same strain. They tell us that God, in the
distribution of the gifts of His grace, gives woman the first place.
And in what happened at the Resurrection, they recognise, not merely
an act of the supreme will of the Master, but moreover a
well-deserved reward for the love Jesus met with from these humble
women: a love which He did not receive from his Apostles, though He
had treated them, for the last three years of his life, with every
mark of intimacy and affection, and had every right to expect them to
be courageous in their devotedness towards Him.
Magdalene
stands as a queen amidst her holy companions. She is most dear to
Jesus. She has loved Him more than all the rest of his friends did.
Se has been more heart-broken at seeing him suffer. She has been more
earnest in paying honour to the sacred body of her buried Master. She
is well-nigh beside herself until she has found Him, and when she, at
length, meets Him and finds that Jesus Himself, still living, and
still full of love for Magdalene, she could die for very joy! She
would show Him her delight, but Jesus checks her, saying: “Touch me
not! For I am not yet ascended to my Father!” Jesus is no longer
subject to the conditions of mortality. True, His human nature will
be eternally united with His divine, but His Resurrection tells the
faithful soul that His relations with her are no longer the same as
before. During His mortal life He suffered Himself to be approached
as man. There was little in his exterior to indicate His divinity.
But now His eternal splendour gleams through His very body and
bespeaks the Son of God. Henceforth, then, we must see Him with the
heart rather than with the eye, and offer Him a respectful love,
rather than one of sentiment, however tender it might be. He allowed
Magdalene to touch Him so long as she was weak in her conversion, and
He Himself was mortal, but now she must aspire to that highest
spiritual good which is the life of the soul — Jesus, in the bosom
of the Father.
In
her first estate Magdalene is the type of the soul when commencing
its search after Jesus. But her love needs a transformation: it is
ardent, but not wise so that the Angel has to chide her: “Why,
”says he, “seek you the living among the dead? (Luke xxiv. 5).
The time is come for her to ascend to something more perfect, and to
seek in spirit Him who is Spirit. Jesus says to Magdalene: “I am
not yet ascended to my Father,” as though He would say: “The mark
of love you would show me is not what I now wish to receive from you.
When I have ascended into heaven and you are there with me, the sight
of my human nature will be no obstacle to your soul’s
vision of my divinity: then you will embrace me!” Magdalene takes
in the lesson of her dear Master: she loves Him more, because her
love is spiritualised. After His Ascension she retires into the holy
cave. There she lives, pondering on all the mysteries of her Jesus’
life. Her love feeds on the memory of all He had done for her, from
His first word which converted her, to the favour He showed her on
the morning of His Resurrection. Each day she advances in the path of
perfect love. The Angels visit and console her. Her probation
completed, she follows her Jesus to heaven, where she lavishes on Him
the ardour of her love in an unrestrained and eternal embrace.
