Over the past few years, I’ve only shared an Easter poem of mine, but here’s a more nourishing reflection; maybe it’ll stretch you a bit, and I hope it inspires you and brings you joy to celebrate the feast with renewed faith and hope.
I’ve culled together excerpts of several of the great articles in the Lenten book Bread and Wine . . . .
Our first article by Brennan Manning states that over a hundred years ago in the Deep South, a phrase common in our Christian culture today the term “born again” was seldom used. Rather, the words used to describe the breakthrough into personal relationship with Jesus Christ were:
“I was seized by the power of great affection!”
It was a profoundly moving way to indicate both the initiative of the almighty God and the explosion(!) within the human heart that occurs when Jesus becomes Lord. (B&W p. 224)
Now that, dear friends, is an amazing description of what should take place in the bodies and souls of our catechumens baptized at the Easter Vigils in churches all over the world and anyone who wishes to “become a convert”—as we used to say.
To continue the same theme in our second article, E. Stanley Jones brings out a theme that I’ve always stressed “The Christ of Experience.” The early disciples had little ritual but a mighty realization. They went out–not remembering Christ–but experiencing him.He was a living, redemptive, actual presence–then and there. They went out with the joyous and grateful cry:
“Christ lives in me!”
The Jesus of history had become the Christ of experience. Some have suggested that the early Christians out-thought, out-lived and out-died the pagans. But that was not enough; they “out-experienced” them.
We cannot merely talk about Christ—we must bring him. We must be a living vital reality –closer than breathing and nearer than hands and feet. We must be “God-bearers.”(B&W pp.346-9) We must “Go tell it!”
As a priest—and in my younger days when I taught young people and adults, I would use the phrase: “Experience precedes ( goes before) understanding.” The point I wanted to get across was the same as Rev. Jones—the only true experience of our faith is to have Jesus in one’s heart. To know him, not just know about him. When I was growing up, all that was required was to regurgitate (spit out to the nun or teacher ) our Catechism answers.
And in the 1980’s, when I first went to study about how the ancients conducted their Catechumenate—what we now call the “RCIA—or Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, I was amazed to find out that they did not teach initiants about the sacraments until what we call the Mystagoia Period, which is after they received the sacraments of Initian, and during the six weeks of the Easter season.
Again, the point is that experience precedes understanding. You see, in the early Church, they guarded their experience of the Holy—the Eucharist. In fact, the catechumens today are still supposed to be dismissed from the assembly until they receive the sacraments at the Easter Vigil. (In our parish, they do it that way– but so many other parishes do not.) Oftentimes priests and parish educators settle for the minimum and, sadly many “converts” are not converted at all. They are not “seized by the power of great affection.” They do not experience the Lord Jesus in their heart and become “God-bearers.”
Now here’s more on the same theme by N. T Wright . . . . Take note of what St. Paul says as taking the brutal facts of the cross and turning it inside out:
“God cancelled the bond that stood against us, with its legal demands: he set it aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Col 2:14)
That is to say: The world, and the rulers of the world, had you in their grip. But Jesus took that bondage upon himself: it is all there in the charge that was nailed over the cross and in Pilate’s cynical use of his authority: “What I have written, I have written.” ~ INRI . Jesus took it on himself: and, being the one person who had never submitted to the rulers of this world, who had lived as a free human being, obedient to God, he beat them at their own game. He made a public example of them; God, in Christ, celebrates his triumph over the prince(s) of the world.
The cross is not a defeat but a victory. It’s the dramatic reassertion that God’s love is sovereign, that the rulers of the world don’t have the last word, that the kingdom of God has defeated the kingdom of Satan, that the kingdoms of the world, now become, in principle, the kingdom of our God, and of his Messiah and he shall reign for ever and ever and ever! (B&W pp. 388-90)
Now here’s the poem I wrote to celebrate this great feast . . .
First day of the week now come
The dawn, now dawning
Women rushing with their spices
Quaking earth trembling, trembled
An angel dazzling, dazzled
Rolling back the stone
Do not be afraid! he said,
Do not be afraid! he said,
He has been raised!
He has been raised!
Go quickly!!
Tell it!
JESUS IS RISEN!
What did he say?
Do not be afraid?
Who me? Not be afraid?
Tell the Reps and Dems: Pray more.
And those needing rent & jobs.
And Ukraine. Gazan. Haiti .
And our dearest children? gunned down ~ why? why?
Go quickly!
Tell it!
Don’t Be Afraid!
Yeah! Tell it!
To your neighbors, to America.
And all the world!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
JESUS IS RISEN!
Before you go, here’s an artful Easter Sunday processional from the Princeton University chapel. Click here. Be sure to turn up your speakers and be sure to enter full screen.
Now here are today’s Mass readings if you’d like to reflect on them.Click here,
With Love,
Bob Traupman
Contemplative Writer
Bread and Wine / Plough Publishing House / Walder NY 2003 \
The image above is the rear window of the Catholic Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, TX.
Father Bob's Reflections 