Easter Vigil Homily of Pope Francis
The Gospel tells us that the women went “to see the tomb” (Mt 28:1). They think that they will find Jesus in the place of death and that everything is over, forever. Sometimes we too may think that the joy of our encounter with Jesus is something belonging to the past, whereas the present consists mostly of sealed tombs: tombs of disappointment, bitterness and distrust, of the dismay of thinking that “nothing more can be done”, “things will never change”, “better to live for today”, since “there is no certainty about tomorrow”. If we are prey to sorrow, burdened by sadness, laid low by sin, embittered by failure or troubled by some problem, we also know the bitter taste of weariness and the absence of joy.
At times, we may simply feel weary about our daily routine, tired of taking risks in a cold, hard world where only the clever and the strong seem to get ahead. At other times, we may feel helpless and discouraged before the power of evil, the conflicts that tear relationships apart, the attitudes of calculation and indifference that seem to prevail in society, the cancer of corruption – there is a great deal of it, the spread of injustice, the icy winds of war. Then too, we may have come face to face with death, because it robbed us of the presence of our loved ones or because we brushed up against it in illness or a serious setback. Then it is easy to yield to disillusionment, once the wellspring of hope has dried up. In these or similar situations – each of us knows our own plights, our paths come to a halt before a row of tombs, and we stand there, filled with sorrow and regret, alone and powerless, repeating the question, “Why?” That chain of “why”…
This, then, is what the Pasch of the Lord accomplishes: it motivates us to move forward, to leave behind our sense of defeat, to roll away the stone of the tombs in which we often imprison our hope, and to look with confidence to the future, for Christ is risen and has changed the direction of history. Yet, to do this, the Pasch of the Lord takes us back to the grace of our own past; it brings us back to Galilee, where our love story with Jesus began, where the first call took place. In other words, it asks us to relive that moment, that situation, that experience in which we met the Lord, experienced his love and received a radiantly new way of seeing ourselves, the world around us and the mystery of life itself. Brothers and sisters, to rise again, to start anew, to take up the journey, we always need to return to Galilee, that is, to go back, not to an abstract or ideal Jesus, but to the living, concrete and palpable memory of our first encounter with him. Yes, to go forward we need to go back, to remember; to have hope, we need to revive our memory. This is what we are asked to do: to remember and go forward! If you recover that first love, the wonder and joy of your encounter with God, you will keep advancing. So remember, and keep moving forward.
Remember your own Galilee and walk towards it, for it is the “place” where you came to know Jesus personally, where he stopped being just another personage from a distant past, but a living person: not some distant God but the God who is at your side, who more than anyone else knows you and loves you. Brother, sister, remember Galilee, your Galilee, and your call. Remember the Word of God who at a precise moment spoke directly to you. Remember that powerful experience of the Spirit; that great joy of forgiveness experienced after that one confession; that intense and unforgettable moment of prayer; that light that was kindled within you and changed your life; that encounter, that pilgrimage... Each of us knows where our Galilee is located. Each of us knows the place of his or her interior resurrection, that beginning and foundation, the place where things changed. We cannot leave this in the past; the Risen Lord invites us to return there to celebrate Easter. Remember your Galilee. Remind yourself. Today, relive that memory. Return to that first encounter. Think back on what it was like, reconstruct the context, time and place. Remember the emotions and sensations; see the colours and savour the taste of it. For it is when you forgot that first love, when you failed to remember that first encounter, that the dust began to settle on your heart. That is when you experienced sorrow and, like the disciples, you saw the future as empty, like a tomb with a stone sealing off all hope. Yet today, brother, sister, the power of Easter summons you to roll away every stone of disappointment and mistrust. The Lord is an expert in rolling back the stones of sin and fear. He wants to illuminate your sacred memory, your most beautiful memory, and to make you relive that first encounter with him. Remember and keep moving forward. Return to him and rediscover the grace of God’s resurrection within you! Return to Galilee. Return to your Galilee.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us follow Jesus to Galilee, encounter him and worship him there, where he is waiting for each of us. Let us revive the beauty of that moment when we realized that he is alive and we made him the Lord of our lives. Let us return to Galilee, the Galilee of our first love. Let each of us return to his or her own Galilee, to the place where we first encountered him. Let us rise to new life!
I like this call to return to our first Galilee.
ReplyDeleteFor comparison, here is Mr. Welby's Easter sermon, which concentrates on such biblical issues as defending the Windsor Framework, more self flagellation about slavery, and defending the CofE allocating £100 million for reparations as 'not post-colonial guilt, ambivalent wokery, it is the living presence of Christ, alive in our church and in our lives, who treats us all, high and low, important and unknown, exactly the same. And in the past, slave and free. And today.' At least he briefly manages to remember persecuted Christians in other parts of the world, but has nothing to say about the people for whom he supposedly has the cure of souls struggling to put foot on the table thanks to policies his church supports.
Lain's not wrong about this. Welly's sermon was more of the usual chaff, fit only for the fire. As a commited Protestant for over thirty years, I think that if I wanted spiritual advice I would go to the Dalai Lama rather than a C of E bishop.
ReplyDeleteThis homily has good spiritual content. I spoke on the same subject myself a couple of months ago. Three times the disciples are told to rendezvous in Galilee. When they meet it is on a mountaintop and He sends them out into all the world.
The Dalia Lama preaches forgiveness and compassion for the Chinese occupiers who forced him into exile, imprisoned and tortured many of his countrymen and oppress his homeland. Mr. Welby, on the other hand, seems to feel that the stain of tangential links to a practice that British Christians were instrumental in stopping is an unforgivable sin for which he must forever atone. I know which of those two approaches I see more of the Gospel in.
DeleteAnd you are right about being depressed by the current landscape. We must remember that God works in eternity, and that our finite perspective is very limited. Empires rise and fall in the blink of an eye for God. All we can do is faithfully plough the furrow that God has given us, and 'do not fear' those things that are outside of our control (which is pretty much everything). All shall be well.
Oh, and Jack, don't be depressed by the spiritual and political landscape. The Almighty is working His purposes out. For instance, the SNP's disintegrating spectacularly, for reasons more closely linked to gender reassignment than most people currently realize.
ReplyDelete"Remember the Word of God who at a precise moment spoke directly to you. Remember that powerful experience of the Spirit; that great joy of forgiveness experienced after that one confession; that intense and unforgettable moment of prayer; that light that was kindled within you and changed your life; that encounter, that pilgrimage"
ReplyDeleteYou know what this sounds a lot like? It sounds a lot like the thing evangelical Christians call being born again. A moment of realization, of committment and of salvation.
But many (most?) people don't have a damascene 'moment of realisation, of commitment and of salvation' (the latter of which is for God to decide, in any event). Personally, I've had many moments of realisation and clarity in my faith life, and I couldn't tell you which one of those 'made me a Christian', or 'saved me', or even if they have. The fervour of my Student Union Christianity seems to me utterly naïve now, but at the time I'd have called myself 'born again'.
DeleteJesus says that one is 'born again' through 'water and the spirit', which the Church identifies with baptism (water) and chrismation (spirit) - cf. Rom 6., Acts 19. This is typically the beginning of our salvific journey, rather than its end.
@ Lain
DeleteThe very answer HJ would give!
Pope Francis places an emphasis on "encounter" with Christ and on our relationship with Him and others over the more 'legalistic' approach that baptism and confirmation are sufficient for salvation. Catholics know this but it can get forgotten. We all have moments when we felt Christ near and times when we felt Him distant.
It's pretty much the answer experienced evangelical Christians would give, too. A moment of first turning is part of the process of salvation, but it is more marked for those who are raised or living without the light of the gospel. The New Testament contains many a call on unbelievers to repent but also many appeals to continue in the faith. Nevertheless it also teaches the power of God to keep those who are His.
DeleteThe Dalai Lama is in some ways preferable to Welby, but in matters of tongue sucking I'm more of a C of E man
DeleteJack has forgotten confession. That's how I approach a "relationship with Him". It might be a "legalistic" approach, but it's sufficient for me. Pope Francis is, I find, an ecclesiastical equivalent of the leftist foundational assumptions that the secular western world runs on nowadays. It's most salient characteristics is that it simply will not leave you alone and it always has thinks what everybody accepted till last Tuesday is wrong and it knows better than the old wisdom which has stood the test of the centuries.
Delete@Chef - I believe that the CofE way is more a good caning from a naked headmaster at a summer camp.
DeleteI think it depends which evangelical you ask. I've certainly known evangelicals who'd say that you're not a true Christian if you can't specify the date and time on which you were 'born again', and I've seen Bibles with a specially printed frontispiece that allows you to record precisely when you prayed the 'sinners prayer' and were saved. There's also, I think, no fixed 'evangelical' position on the role of baptism in salvation: who should be baptised, when, where, how and so on; whether salvation is a binary, one time event, or a process; and on whether one can ever fall away from one's faith.
I agree that the initial act of metanoia - turning towards God - is necessarily more marked in those of no faith, but that for most of us, our pilgrimage is marked not by one moment of turning, but by a series of faltering half-turnings towards and turning away from God, as St. Peter did. In my experience, most of my moments of lofty certainty have turned out to be false summits in the foothills. Being 'born again' is, I think, to engage in the toddleresque struggle of stumbling a few paces towards the goal, falling down and getting back up again, rather than to have immediately arrived at salvation as some Christians portray it.
@Bell - I read Jack's comment as critical of those who believe that simply being baptised and confirmed is sufficient for salvation, and that they need make no further effort to grow to be Christlike. We know that we are called to more than reducing our faith to enrolment in a club, for 'God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.' I doubt that the people Jack is referring to ever darken the confessional.
Delete@ Jack - I agree, we have to be careful of the two extremes of believing that partaking in the 'right' set of rituals or holding the 'right' set of beliefs can save us without making any effort to change our hearts; and believing that our salvation is dependant on our feelings. Even Luther, defending the doctrine of one baptism, wrote that we'd have to be baptised every week if we went by our feelings.
The New Testament narrative is one of moments of salvation. Not just the Damascene road, but many others. When Peter preached in Jerusalem at Pentecost, telling them to repent and be baptized, three thousand were added to their number that day. They received the Holy Spirit, described as a seal, guaranteeing their inheritance. That is the crucial factor in new birth: the Spirit of God in you, which has drawn you back to God repeatedly in the days since you first received Him. Baptism is the outward confession, but being born of the Spirit is the regeneration by which we are counted children of God.
DeleteIn Acts 19, we see that 'believing' and 'receiving the Holy Spirit' aren't the same thing, implying that something more than just believing must happen (the demons believe, after all).
DeleteBelieving is an act initiated by the individual, in this case through receiving John's baptism of repentance (19:3). But the reception of the Holy Spirit is bestowed upon them by an elder of the Church (i.e., a bishop): in this case by receiving Christ's baptism (19:5) and through the laying on of hands (19:6). If believers normatively receive the Holy Spirit through their own devices, this would not have been necessary (cf. Jn 20:22 - the Spirit is always given, not received).
The Apostle's actions here are clearly sacramental acts in which the Spirit is conferred upon the believer, they are not primarily acts of confession made by the believer (although they can, of course, be that as well).
@ Bell
DeleteNot at all. Confession is a wonderful sacrament in which one humbles oneself before God through Christ and turns back to Him. The Eucharistic sacrifice is the summit of our faith and relationship with Christ but this is a daily endeavour, not a weekly ritual. Pope Francis isn't changing the past wisdom; he's reminding us of this.
Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus was a sudden event that can’t have lasted more than a few minutes, but in his speech in Caesarea addressed to Agrippa and Berenice, shortly before being shipped to Rome, he acknowledges that there has to be a follow-up. I think he could be describing his own experience. He dedicated the rest of his life to “performing deeds in keeping with his repentance.”
Delete[I] declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. (Acts 26:20)