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In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost.
We keep today the feast of a number of the followers
of Christ of whom we think seldom, because they are
mentioned very little in the Scriptures. And each of
them could be a lesson for us.
St. Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man who listened
to Christ with an open mind and did not commit
himself. Neither did Nicodemus; but Nicodemus was a
learned man, part of the Sanhedrin. He had been
listening to Christ, he had been asking questions
from Him, he wanted to understand, he wanted to be
sure. But neither of them had committed themselves
to follow Christ, to declare themselves as His
disciples.
And yet, when Christ in the eyes of everyone was
defeated, when victory had come to His enemies, when
He was dead, about to be buried, their faithfulness
to Him who had taught them words of life came to the
fore. And they joined the Mother of God to bring
down the body of Christ and to bury him. Daringly
they went to Pontius Pilate and asked for this body
so that they could bury Him with veneration. In the
course of His life they had been listening to Him
with a hesitant yet open mind. When death came their
faithfulness sprang to the fore. And seeing the pain
of the Mother of God and St. John the apostle there
was no doubt left in them; they must declare
themselves, because they could not accept that He
should be rejected through defeat after having been
their teacher, their guide and their friend.
And then there is another group of people, the
myrrh-bearing women, a group of women who had been
following Christ and supporting Him and His
disciples in their need. When Christ was crucified
all the apostles fled, with the exception of St.
John and with the exception of these women. It was
not an intellectual conviction that held them as
disciples of Christ. It was something which perhaps
could be defined in the words of the pilgrims to
Emmaus: 'was not our heart burning within us when He
was speaking to us on the way'. All the way from
Galilee to Jerusalem, from the peace of the land to
the tragedy of Jerusalem, all this time they had
been listening and their hearts had come to life -
not with personal love but with a deep sense of life
eternal. These are the words which also St. Peter
had said earlier, when most people who surrounded
them had left, and Christ turned to his disciples
and said: are you also going to go? And Peter said:
where should we go? You have the words of eternal
life. And these words were not simply syllogisms, or
proofs, or ways of conveying things. When he spoke
it was life eternal that was awoken in them - the
door into eternal life that came to life. And they
knew that these words were true because there was
new life in them. And so was it also for these
women.
So today we keep the feast of people who proved
faithful, the ones who in their frailty had not
fled, and the ones who in the face of defeat and
tragedy had suddenly become disciples and faithful.
Let us remember them, not only seeing their glory as
we have done today in the service, but also asking
ourselves: do we belong, to any extent, to the
example given by one or another of them? Can we say
that in the face of the defeat of Christ we would
come out and say: I am one of His disciples,
although in the time when there was no danger around
I kept out, hesitant, unsure, asking myself
questions, indeed asking Him questions? Is any one
of us Joseph of Arimathea, is any one Nicodemus, and
can we say that we are like these myrrh-bearing
women, whom neither the needs nor the defeat nor the
death of Christ had been able to alienate from Him?
None of us is any of it to the full; but let us
learn from them and try to grow into that
faithfulness which they have shown; the ones
throughout the life of Christ, and the other ones in
the face of His defeat. Amen.
CHRIST IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED! |
