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Believe As You Pray

Reflections on Easter, Cycle B, April 16

I am a fan of high intrigue mystery novels. Who did it? Why did it happen? How did it happen? When did it occur? What actually occurred? Inquiring minds want to know! It’s only later that something is revealed, something discovered.

Today’s Gospel reads like a mystery novel. In the darkness of the early morning a woman arrives at a tomb. The stone is rolled back — the grave is opened. She runs and tells others that the body is missing. Others run out to the tomb and find it as she has reported. The body is missing!

Just like a good book, a mystery unveils before our very eyes. Of only one of the disciples, the Beloved One, who looked inside the empty tomb does scripture say “he saw and he believed.” He knew what had happened. He knew that Jesus had risen from the dead. The others, like those who read a novel, don’t know what happened — they “don’t get it.”

Jesus had told his friends and disciples about suffering, dying and rising. His friends and disciples had seen Jesus suffer and die. Did the story end there? Did this mystery story end with death? Or does it end with an empty tomb?

Two thousand years later we can look back and say we understand something about this mystery story. But it still is a mystery — not in the sense that once we know what happened, it has no bearing on our life. Very few high intrigue mystery novels really touch our lives, have meaning or impact on them. This Easter mystery is quite to the contrary! We know what happened and it has impact and meaning in our lives. This event is relevant to us.

In our tradition we frequently use the term, the Paschal Mystery. We enter into the Paschal Mystery. How? When we die to self and rise to new life. We have spent 40 days during Lent changing the way we live so that we could enter into new life. Lent gave us a time to move in a different direction. Lent was a time we took to respond to grace in a new way so that God could change our lives — our tombs of sin and misdirection could be emptied so that we could experience the newness of life in Christ.

The mystery of the resurrection story is not about something that simply occurred in the past and has no meaning for the present. We are able to enter into this mystery each and every time we respond to grace, the very life of God present in our lives. We are able to enter into this mystery, the mystery of new life.

Think back over these past 40 days. How has your life changed? How has new life entered into you? Has your tomb seen the stone rolled back? How have you responded to God’s grace in your life? We have entered into a mystery. Not a mystery that concludes with the final verse of the story. The very mystery of God’s life entering ours. The tomb is empty. There is new life! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

(Dr. Richard Linneberger is Minister of Christian Formation at St. Nicholas Church, Virginia Beach.)

Being grateful

Availability to spend time in prayer

Sometimes when I sit at the computer to write a column, the blank screen is terrifying. I have no idea what I’ll write about, and nothing promising seems to be on the horizon.

If I were prone to panic attacks, at those times, I’d have one. Other times, I have an idea that’s been churning around in my head for hours or even days, and I’m eager, even zealous, to write it down. Most common, I’m neither terrified nor eager. Because I know I have a deadline, I simply make myself available at the keyboard and wait to see what happens. Contemplating my approach to writing, I see similarities to the spiritual life. Sometimes in our prayer lives we are full of passion. Sometimes we are on the brink of despair.

Most times, we are neither passionate nor desperate. However, unlike writers, because we rarely have to meet a deadline, we do not always make ourselves available for prayer. And because we’re unavailable, we miss out. (By prayer, I mean times in the day when we are consciously aware of the presence of God.) It is so easy to find distractions, legitimate and otherwise, to interfere with our availability. It’s interesting to note how availability is perceived in our culture. On the one hand, almost everyone carries a cell phone, so we can be contacted anywhere at anytime. On the other hand, we are consumed with busyness.

Were you to ask us to carve out an hour or two in our day for something unrelated to the tasks at hand, we would be hard-pressed to find the time. The idea of spending an hour doing nothing would seem utterly foolish, even shameful. We too often equate our worth with our level of productivity.

My husband and I have a friend who, because of political problems, resigned from his job managing a city in the Midwest. Offered a fair severance, he was in no rush to find new employment, but, in order to get out of the house, he took office space in a building and designated it a “think tank.”

Talking with our friend, we asked what he did during the day at his new office, and he came up with a hilarious monologue about spending the day at work “thinking.” The concept was funny because we are so used to hearing people describe their daily activities as full of action, interaction, and responsibility. The idea of spending a work day in solitary thinking seemed absurd. Yet the other extreme is equally, indeed, even more, absurd. However, it is by far the more common. So consumed with busyness, we fail to appreciate the here and now. We rush from task to task rarely reflecting on what we are doing and why we are doing it.

I have been sorting through old family photographs recently. As I look at them, I find myself alternating between laughter and tears. I am stunned by the passage of time. If I were to change anything about my children’s early years it would be my attitude about how our time together was spent. Knowing what I know now, I would have been less busy with unimportant tasks and more available to them every day. Some people will readily admit they have to keep busy in order to function. Many of these folks are grieving a loss and find they must consume their day with activity in order not to fall into the pit of despair. Others are retired and feel they must stay productive to alleviate loneliness.

While such behavior is understandable and may help in the short term, the pain of loss is not assuaged by busyness, just as it is not assuaged by alcohol, drugs, or other means of escape. Grief may be numbed and buried, but it remains. The same is true for loneliness. While no one would suggest that it’s necessary or advisable to spend large periods of time alone, so often we go to the other extreme, terrified of allowing ourselves periods of time simply to be alone in God’s presence. By making ourselves available to experiencing suffering when we encounter it, by giving ourselves time and permission to suffer through the emptiness, the loneliness, the grief, the doubts, the fears, we grow in grace. By making ourselves wholly available to God, surrendering all that we are and all that we have, acknowledging our brokenness and need, we are, painfully, beautifully, transformed.

(Mary Hood Hart is director of religious education at St. Brendan the Navigator parish in Shallotte, N.C., and is a wife and mother of four children.)

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In Light of Faith

Daily dying and rising

I left the meeting feeling frustrated and disillusioned and, grumbling to myself, I muttered, “He just doesn’t get it.” But seconds later I was convicted of my sin, when in the silence of my heart I heard the words, “No, it’s you who doesn’t get it; you have no right to judge.”

My criticism of a member of the Body of Christ became for me what I refer to as a “God moment.” Graced awareness, whether it’s of our own goodness or of our sinfulness is a gift that has been won for us through the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This week, more than any other, we remember and we celebrate that we who once were dead have been brought to life. But it doesn’t end there. As Christians we are called to respond to the ongoing invitation to seek and find the One who loves us and calls us by name. At times we are faithful to the call but not always.

While most of us are not the kind of thieves or thugs that are held accountable in a court of law, we are liable for sins and indiscretions that we commit regularly on any given day. Jesus restored our birthright as sons and daughters of God and in response every person is called to rise from his or her personal pit of darkness and journey to the heart of God.

The road is direct but our human condition presents obstacles that divert us at nearly every step along the way. Happily, the Church provides a compass designed to redirect us when complacency allows us to tarry or leads us astray. During the liturgies of Holy Thursday and Good Friday we walk with Jesus through his passion and death, not as his supporter but as one of the crowd; one of the mob who called for his crucifixion.

The guilt which for centuries was laid at the feet of the Jews is ours to own. In the passion narratives of Palm Sunday and Good Friday we, the assembly, are asked to play the role of the crowd. It makes us uncomfortable and yet it’s who we are. We are sinners and, like the good thief, we need to ask for forgiveness. Unless sin is followed by repentance, salvation is taken for granted. Rather than appreciating it as gift, we view it as entitlement.

Pride captivates hearts and division results as one person, one group, one religion, one nation sets itself against another. This is especially hurtful when as members of the Body of Christ, we fail to see that we are called to be one.

When so-called liberals lash out against conservatives or vice versa, when devotees of pre- or post-Vatican II theologies fling criticisms at one another, we wound the Body of Christ.
When self-righteous thinking causes us to judge and condemn, we have only to reflect on the person of Jesus to learn there is another way to treat our brothers and sisters.

Scripture tells us that on the night before he died, when Jesus knew his betrayal was imminent, He washed the feet of his disciples. He told them, “As I have done, so must you also do.”(John 13:15) Next Jesus lifted to His Father in Heaven the very ones who would flee in the hours ahead. Then taking bread and wine, He instituted the Sacrament that would feed his followers and all who would come after them. When we share Eucharist, we are invited to come and eat and then we are sent forth to go and feed. Sadly, more often than we realize, we as his disciples go forth and throw stones. We see evidence of this when we take it upon ourselves to disparage the work of another, to gossip, or as I found myself doing, simply grumbling because in my mind, he/she just doesn’t get it.

Each time we judge, we are the crowd on Good Friday that yells, “Crucify him, crucify him.” When we rush to our defense in the face of criticism, we cannot bear to look at Jesus who stood silent before his accusers, and so we choose Barabbas because Barabbas makes us feel better about ourselves. As Jesus travels the road to Calvary we watch from a distance and are humbled by those who have been transformed by Christ.

We see the face of love in Veronica, the holy women of Jerusalem and even in the reluctant Simon of Cyrene whose heart was changed when he touched the cross. We see it in the presence of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, her sister Mary wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene and John who, with eyes fixed on their dying Lord, uttered not a word of condemnation. To die with Christ means overcoming sin, one temptation at a time. Each time we affirm another’s goodness, our vision is restored.

Each time we overcome the impulse to disparage another’s good name, our lips are cleansed. Each time we refrain from ascending the throne of God to sit in judgment on our brothers and sisters, our hearts are purified. And each time we rise with Christ, our Easter alleluia becomes our thank you and love becomes our song.

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