Life….Changing

The actual text, that long hymn that Brother Mikael proclaimed at the beginning of our service is full of rejoicing that the Lord has overcome gloom and death, and darkness.  And yet, when we look around at the world, we see, there’s still a lot of gloom and darkness, and death.  There’s a lot that is sad and a lot that is bad, evil in our world.  And so where is the power of the resurrection, 2000 years later?  You know, it’s a gloomy morning, right?  It’s covered with clouds, cool, windy, not an easy morning to be up so early.  And a lot of times, that’s the way our life is, right?  A lot of times life can be gloomy and cold.  Imagine a land where it was always like that, it was always gloomy, like this bank of clouds, this little bank of clouds that we have today. Imagine a land where it’s not Texas, that it was always like that, and the people had never seen anything else, always gray, always gloomy, always cool.  That’s kind of the way our world is.  And then someone came and said that he would lead us to a land, which was not gloomy.  And there’s people who had never seen the beauty of the sun.  Wouldn’t we like to see the sun right now.  The people had never seen the beauty, think if you had never seen the sun, it was always gray. You’re never seen how beautiful things are with the golden light of the sun or like a great orange sunrise or sunset, or the moon or the stars you’ve never seen.  It was always gloomy and gray.

And so he promised to take us to land where it wasn’t always gloomy; always beautiful, and that land of beauty and light, and that light which makes everything come alive and warms and gives color.  And that’s what’s happening in the resurrection.   The Lord is revealing to us that the gloominess that we’re seeing is only the limitation of our life, or we can see right now we can’t see the sun. The sun is up there. There’s this whole vast light in the universe that’s beyond us, but we can’t see it right now. And that’s the condition of our life here on this earth.  There’s like clouds that don’t let us see the light, that don’t let us see the whole universe.  when we look around at the world, we see, there’s still a lot of gloom and darkness, and death.  There’s a lot that is sad and a lot that is bad, evil in our world.  We’re like children still in the womb.  St. Paul says, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable of all men.”  That is our hope is way beyond this life.  And he says, “If Christ is not raised, what do I gain?  That I fought with beast at Ephesus,” that is what do I gain from all the sacrifices I’ve made?  “If the dead are not raised, let us eat drink. For tomorrow we die and there’s nothing else.”   But Christ’s resurrection reveals to us that there is justice, beyond all the injustice of this world there is justice, justice is coming.  And as we heard today, he says “if we have been united with Jesus in a death like him,” and that’s why life is so difficult, because we are united in His saving mission and carrying the cross to save the world.  That’s why right now it’s cold, we’re kind of shivering, because we’re still in this world where we’re sharing Christ’s difficult mission of saving the world.  That’s what St. Paul means, it says, “if we’ve been united with Him in a death like His,” and that’s what’s happening, our life here is sharing His saving sacrifice.  But St. Paul goes on to say, “We shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His,”  we’re sharing His sacrifice, and we will share His resurrection, the triumph of God’s love.  And so this helps us to understand, as like a Psalm 30, that we have for this Easter, where it says, “His anger is only for a moment. His favor, is for a lifetime.”   And when it says a lifetime, it doesn’t just mean our little life here on earth, it means our eternal life.  The night is often our life here on earth, where there’s a lot of sadness and weeping.  But joy comes with the morning.  And what is the morning?  The morning is our resurrection.  The Psalm goes on to say, “you have turned my mourning,” so much mourning, so much while your sadness and mourning in this life, but “you have turned it into dancing, dancing with joy, you have loosed my sackcloth, and clothed me with gladness.”   So we are still, and that’s what this situation is, mourning reminds us we are still in this difficult world. But the resurrection of Jesus is the proof that there is a whole world of love and light and warmth, that God has prepared for us, a world of joy forever.  And that joy already begins to change our life right now, even though we’re still in this world of gloominess, it already begins to bring a hope, a love to us.  You know, this weekend, this Triduum we’ve been reading a lot from the meditations of Maria ValTorta and some very painful passages of the suffering of Jesus, and of the suffering of our Blessed Mother.  Sometimes they’re almost unbearable.  My favorite passage is to read the passages of the Resurrection.  And if you haven’t read them, I would encourage you, they’re very encouraging, if you have read them I would encourage you.  And so I wanted to read you a little part of her meditation on the Resurrection of Jesus where, according to some experts, we know we can know actually the date, the very date in which Jesus was risen.  According to some, it was April 5 in the year 33. But what was that morning like?   The Gospels don’t give us that much detail, what was that morning like.  And so I want to read that meditation if you want to, you can close your eyes.  “The guards weary, cold, sleepy, and various postures are watching over the sepulcher,  the stone of which has been reinforced around the edges, as if it were a buttress, and a thick layer of lime on the opaque white of which stand out the large rosettes of red wax of the temple seal, impressed with others directly on the fresh line.  The guards must have lit a little fire during the night, because there are ashes and half burnt firebrands on the ground.  And they must have played and eaten because scattered around there are the remains of food and some small clean bones, which have certainly been used for some game, like our dominoes or marbles, which are played on the course board traced on a path.  Then they became tired and left things as they are and they tried to find more or less comfortable postures to sleep or to keep watch.  At dawn in the clear sky, when to the east there is now a completely rosy zone, which is spreading out more and more widely, but where however, there are no sunbeams as of yet.  Suddenly, a very bright light meteor appears, coming from unknown depths and it’s a sense like a sphere of fire of unsustainable splendor, followed by a glowing trail, which perhaps is nothing but the persistence of it’s brightness in our retina, and it descends at a very high speed towards the Earth, shedding such an intense fast, phantasmagorical light, frightful in its beauty, that the rosy light of dawn vanishes, outshone by its wide incandescence.  The guard astonished, raise their heads, also, because with the light there comes a mighty, harmonious, solemn rumble that fills the whole of creation with its roar.  It comes from heavenly depths.  It is the Hallelujah, the angelic glory that follows the Spirit of Christ, which is returning to His glorious flesh.  The meteor clashes on the useless closure of the sepulcher, tear it off, throws it to the ground, and it strikes with terror and noise the guards placed as jailers of the Master of the Universe, producing with its return to the earth a new earthquake, as it had caused one witness when the Spirit of the Lord fled from the earth and enters the dark sepulcher that becomes all bright, with its indescribable light.  And while it remains suspended in the still air, the spirit is infused again into the body, motionless under the funeral bandages.  All this takes place, not in a minute, but in a fraction of a minute, so fast, the in the appearance, the scent, penetration and disappearance of the light of God.  The I want of the Divine Spirit to its cold body is noiseless. It has uttered by the essence of the immobile matter, but no word is perceived by the human ear.  The flesh perceives the order and obeys it with a deep sigh.  Nothing else for some minutes.  Under the sudarium and the shroud, their glorious body is recomposed and eternal beauty.  It awakes from the sleep of death.  It comes back from the nothing in which it was.  It lives after being dead, the heart certainly awakes, and gives its first throb.  It propels the remaining frozen blood through the veins, and once creates the full measure of it and the empty arteries in the mobile lungs in the dark brain, and it brings back warmth, health, strength and thought.  Another moment and there is a sudden movement under the heavy shroud.  It is so sudden, that from the moment He certainly moved His folded arms, to the moment He appears standing, imposing, splendid in His garment of immaterial matter, supernaturally handsome and majestic, with a gravity that changes and elevates Him, and yet leaves Him exactly Himself.  The eye has hardly time to follow the development.  And now it admires Him, so different from what the mind remembers, tidied up without wounds or blood, only blazing with the light that gushes from the five wounds and issues from every pore of his skin.  When He takes His first step, and in the movement, the rays emanating from His hands and feet, halo Him with beams of light, and His head haloed with a garland, made with the countless little wounds of the crown, but they no longer bleed but only shine to the hem of His tunic.  When opening His arms that were folded across His chest, He uncovers the zone of the very bright luminosity, that filters through His tunic, and flaming it like a sun at the height of His heart.  Then it is really the light that has taken a body, not the poor light of the earth, not the poor light of the stars, not the poor light of the sun, but the light of God.  All the heavenly brightness that gathers in one beam and grants Him it’s inconceivable as eyes.  It’s golden fire, it’s hair, it’s angelic whiteness as garment and complexion, and all that exists, but cannot be described by human words. The Super eminent ardor of the Most Holy Trinity, that outshines with it’s ardent power, every fire and paradise absorbing Him and itself to generate Him again at every moment of the eternal time.  Heart of heaven, that attracts and spreads His blood, the countless drops of have incorporeal blood that is the blessed souls, the angels, everything paradise is, the love of God, the love for God.  All this is the light that is that forms the risen Christ.  When He moves, coming towards the exit, and the eye can see beyond His brightness, to most beautiful brilliance, but similar to stars compared with the sun, appear to me, one on His side, the other on the other side of the threshold, prostrated in adoration of their God, (so that’s the two angels), who passes by enveloped in His light, beatified with His smile.  And it goes out, leaving the funeral grotto and going back to walk on the earth that awakes out of joy and shines in its dews in the hues of herbs and roses and countless corollas of the apple trees that opened by a wonder to the early sun that kisses them, and to the eternal Son, who proceeds under them.  The guards are there, shocked, the corrupt powers of man do not see God, whereas the pure powers of the universe the flowers, herbs, birds, admire and venerate The Mighty One who passes by in the halo of His own light, in an oriole of sunlight, His smile, His eyes that rest on the flowers, on branches that look up at the clear sky, everything becomes more beautiful.  Jesus raises His hand and blesses all around Him. While the birds sing more loudly, and the wind carries it’s scent. It disappears from my sight.  Right now we can’t yet see the sun, but it will come up eventually.  We can’t yet see the risen Jesus, but we know He will come. He is victorious forever.  And so, with our Blessed Mother, she is with us to hold on to faith, to hold on to hope, to persevere, that the risen Christ will come, if we have been united with Him, in a death like His, in a suffering like His sacrifice.  We shall be united with Him forever in a resurrection, like His..  Amen. Hallelujah.