In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Week after week we feel that we are coming closer and closer to the glorious
Resurrection of Christ. And it seems to us that we are moving fast, from Sunday
to Sunday as it were, to the day when all horrors, all terrors, will have
disappeared.
And yet so easily do we forget that before we reach the day of the Resurrection
we must, together with Christ, together with His apostles, tread the road of the
Crucifixion. 'So we are ascending to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be
delivered into the hands of men, and they shall crucify Him, and the third day
He will rise’. All we notice is that He will rise. But do we ever think of the
way in which the disciples went to Jerusalem, knowing that the Crucifixion was
at hand? They were moving in fear. They were not yet mature enough to be those
who would give their lives for the message to be spread. They were moving in
fear. When Christ told them that they would go now to Jerusalem, return to the
city which had then renounced Christ, put Him into danger of His life, they said
to Him, 'Let us not go.' And only one disciple, Thomas, said, 'No. Let us go
with Him, and die with Him.'
This disciple is the one whom, foolishly I believe, we call the Doubter: the one
who was not prepared to give his trust to God, his faith, his life, his blood,
without certainty. But his heart was unreservedly given to Christ. How wonderful
to be such a man! But the other disciples would not desert Christ. They walked
towards Jerusalem.
And we have today another example of one who went through a tragedy before they
met Christ. It is Mary of Egypt. She was a sinner. She was a harlot. She was
unfaithful to God in her soul and in her body. She had no reverence for this
body which God had created and this soul. And yet she was tragically confronted
with the fact that there was no way for her into the temple of God unless she
rejected evil and chose purity, repentance, newness of life.
Let us reflect on the disciples who almost begged Christ not to return to
Jerusalem, because Jerusalem was a city where all prophets had died; and they
did not want Christ to die, and they were afraid. Let us ask ourselves how much
we resemble them. And let us ask ourselves freely today how do we resemble, or
not, Mary of Egypt - Mary who had lived her life according to her own ways
and desires, followed all temptations of her body and soul; and one day realised
that as she was, she could not enter the temple of God.
So easily do we enter the divine temple, forgetting so easily that the church
into which we come is a small part of a world that has chosen to be alien to
God, that has rejected God, lost interest in Him; and that the few believers
have created for God a place of refuge - yes, the church is the fullness
of Heaven, and at the same time a tragic place of refuge, the only place where
God has a right to be because He is wanted. And when we come here, we enter into
the divine realm. We should come into it with a sense of awe, not just walk into
it as into a space but walk into it as a space which is already the divine
Kingdom.
If we were in that mood we would, when we come to the doors of the church, be,
however little, like Mary of Egypt. We would stop and say, 'How can I come in?'
And if we did that with our whole heart, broken-heartedly, with a sense of
horror of the fact that we are so distant from God, so alien, so unfaithful to
Him, then the doors would open and we would see that we are not simply in a big
space surrounded with walls but we are in a space which is God's Heaven come to
earth.
Let us therefore learn from this experience what it means to go step by step
towards the Resurrection, because in order to reach the Resurrection we must go
through Calvary, we must go through the tragedy of Holy Week and make it our
own, partaking with Christ and His disciples and the crowds around in the
horror, the terror of it; and also experience it as a scorching fire that will
burn in us all that is unworthy of God and make us clean. And perhaps one day,
when the fire will have burnt everything which is not worthy of God, each of us
may become an image of the burning bush, aflame with divine fire and not
consumed, because only that which could survive the fire of God would have
remained is us. Amen. |