Easter Sunday of
the Resurrection of the Lord
At the Mass
During the Day
Dear
brothers and sisters,
Upon
our lips today is that “song of sweetness,” that “voice of joy that cannot
die,” that glorious word of Alleluia.[1]
Having repressed this gladsome strain within our hearts these past many weeks,
Holy Mother Church now urges each of us to open our lips and let this “anthem
ever raised by choirs on high” and resound throughout the land.[2]
Why? Because “this is the day the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24). This is the
day on which the Lord Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death, rose victorious
over the grave. This is the day in which we should “rejoice and be glad” (Psalm
118:24). Alleluia!
On
Friday, the Lord Jesus ascended the throne of his Cross and poured out his love
for us; in doing so, he broke the chains of sin. Yesterday,
…after his
triumph over the devil, he descended to the heart of the world, so that he
might preach to the dead, that all who desire him might be set free… He had
descended to trample death underfoot with his own power, then only to rise with
the captives.[3]
Today
we rejoice and cry out, “Alleluia!”, with the confidence that as we were “buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the
Father, we too might live in
newness of life (Romans 6:4).
Permit
me, if you will, to change course for just a moment in a direction that might
at first seem a bit odd. In one of his many letters, the great J. R. R.
Tolkien, the celebrated author of The
Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (and,
more importantly, a devoted Catholic) answered a query about the meaning of the
of
his legendarium, saying:
I should say, if
asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the
wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is
hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man![4]
Elsewhere
he called this “the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape
from Death.”[5]
It
was the professor’s firm conviction that at the heart of every man, woman, and
child is a desire for deathlessness, for life without end. Is this not why we
smooth out our wrinkles and dye our hair in a vain attempt to deny the reality
of aging? Is this not at the heart of the recent and distressing news that a
man hopes to have his head transplanted onto the body of another?[6]
Whether we have yet acknowledged it or not, each of us indeed has a desire for
deathlessness.
This
desire is rooted in the fact that death was not part of God’s original plan for
us; rather, death entered into Creation as a consequence of the Original Sin,
as a consequence of our rebellion against the will of God (cf. Genesis 3:19).
God did not
decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life was
condemned because of sin to unremitting labor and unbearable sorrow and so
began to experience the burden of wretchedness. There had to be a limit to its
evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of
grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.[7]
Is
this not something of what Tolkien tried to show by the unnatural long life the
ring granted to its bearers, a length of life that wore away at their existence,
an “endless serial living”?[8]
It
was this realization that led Saint Ambrose of Milan to see death as “no cause
for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind’s salvation.”[9]
It was by the
death of one man that the world was redeemed. Christ did not need to die if he
did not want to, but he did not look on death as something to be despised,
something to be avoided, and he could have found no better means to save us
than by dying. Thus his death is life for all. We are sealed with the sign of
his death; when we pray we preach his death; when we offer sacrifice we
proclaim his death. His death is victory; his death is a sacred sign…[10]
His
death is victory because he is, in fact, not dead, but “seated at the right
hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). His death is victory because it is not the end
for him because “he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41). This is why we sing,
“Alleluia!”
In
his Resurrection from the dead, in the fact that he still lives after his
death, that he can move about, that he can eat and drink, that he can converse
with his friends, we see that Jesus “is the death of death, death hidden in the
word of God and therefore related to life, which takes death’s power away when,
by the destruction of the body, men are destroyed by it in the earth.”[11]
In this, though it may seem strange to say, “the tomb is not the central point
of the message of the Resurrection. It is instead the Lord in his new life.”[12]
It
is often said today that we Christians are fools and simpletons because we
believe in the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection. Truth be told, we are
not affirming an
absurd miracle but affirming the power of God, who respects his creation, without being tied to the law of its death.
Indubitably death is the typical form of things in this world as it actually
exists. But the overcoming of death, its real, not simply its conceptual
elimination, is still today, as it was then, the object and desire of the human
quest.[13]
The
desire for deathlessness remains the greatest desire of the human heart, though
it cannot be achieved by any technical means. Rather, it “comes about through
the creative power of the word and of love. Only these powers are sufficiently
strong to modify so fundamentally the structure of matter, to make it possible
to overcome the barrier of death.”[14]
For this reason, the Resurrection of Jesus gives us the promise of true and
lasting Joy, of “Joy beyond the walls of grief, poignant as grief.”[15]
The
great cry of Alleluia sounds today from our lips because, in the Resurrection
of Jesus the Christ, we have the confidence that “this victory is in effect
possible, that death does not belong principally and irrevocably to the
structure of the creature, to matter.” The message of the Resurrection is not principally
about a faith in an empty tomb but about “the real power of God, and the
importance of human responsibility,” a responsibility grounded in love of God,
both of his love for us and of our love for him.[16] From
the Incarnation to the Resurrection, “this story,” as Tolkien said, “begins and
ends in joy.”
There is no tale
ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical
men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely
convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either
to sadness or to wrath.[17]
Today,
then, just as the Lord opened wide the tomb which tried to swallow him up, let each
of us open our hearts and our ears to Jesus, the Risen Lord. Let us not be stubborn
and closed off to his grace, but let us speak to him as friends and ask for the
gift of his life, that we might truly, with him, escape from death. Let us hear
him say to us, “I have risen, and I am with you still, alleluia.”[18]
[1] “Alleluia dulce Carmen,” J. M. Neale, trans. In Eleanor Parker, “‘Ceasing from the voice of joy and
gladness’: Aelfric’s Homily for
Septuagesima,” A Clerk of Oxford,
16 February 2014.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Ephesians, 4.9. In Ancient Christian Doctrine, Vol. 3: We
Believe in the Crucified and Risen Lord (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter
Varsity Press, 2009), 135.
[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter to
Herbert Schiro, 17 November 1967. In Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 262.
[5] Ibid., On Fairy Stories.
In Christopher Tolkien, ed., The Monsters
and the Critics and Other Essays (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2006),
153.
[6] Cf. Tina Chai, “Surgeon
plans to perform first human head transplant,” The Cavalier Daily 30 March 2017. Accessed 15 April 2017.
[7] Saint Ambrose of Milan, From a book on the death of his brother
Satyrus.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Saint Ambrose of Milan, ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Benedict XVI, Journey to Easter: Spiritual Reflections for
the Lenten Season, (New York, New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company), 131.
[12] Ibid., 130.
[13]
Ibid., 131-32,
emphasis original.
[14] Ibid., 132.
[15] J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 153.
[16] Benedict XVI, Journey to Easter, 132.
[17] J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories, 156.
[18] Entrance Antiphon for Easter Sunday
of the Resurrection of the Lord, Roman Missal,
71.
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