Dom 3 post Pascha
Evening, 16 April 2016
Church of St John the
Evangelist / Agawam
“Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep,
but the world
shall rejoice”
(Jn 16:20).
It is a consoling and mighty truth
that the Father sustains us with what we might call a Liturgical Providence. What is it we mean by this? The yearly round
of liturgical rites that we celebrate is not something static; our prayers and
ceremonies do not contain simply one hidden meaning for us to discover and be
done with; the texts of the Mass do not just say the same thing over and over
again. No, these prayers, readings, and rites are as active as we are, if not
more so: they speak to us, and to our times—directly and deliberately. The
sacred liturgy gives us a way to interpret what is going on around us, both in
the Church, the world, and in the everyday fabric of our personal lives. It
provides us with the answers to our deepest questions. Most profoundly, for those who are attentive and humble, it
secures the grace to live happily within the very will of God that is revealed
in the liturgy’s providential unfolding. With that in mind, we dare to ask:
what is liturgical Providence suggesting to us today?
The life we are now living is one of
contrasts. All around us there are threats to what we hold true and good, to
what we hold sacred—and you need me to outline none of the challenges and sorrows that beset the Church in the
world of today. “Amen, amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but
the world shall rejoice.” That is, the world shall rejoice when we Catholics
are given cause to weep. This is where we find ourselves. After all, nowhere
does Christ say that we are to expect friendship with the world; nowhere does
Christ say that our life in the world would be easy and unambiguous. Rightfully,
too, did St Peter calls us strangers and pilgrims.
But if we believe what Christ says, we also believe that all this has
been foreseen. Elsewhere
he says we are salt:[1] the implication is that
the world is flavorless and wants salting. He says we are light:[2] the implication is that
the world is dark and wants illuminating. As for today’s Gospel, every mother
in this church has a special claim on it. “A woman, when she is in labor, hath sorrow,
because her hour is come: but when she hath brought forth the child, she
remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.” Friends, we must either believe this to be
true, or we must fall.
The life we are now living is one of
contrasts. It is also one of waiting and provision. But if we take Christ at
his word, the victory and joy that he
promises is as real and concrete as a mother’s newborn child. Nine months a
woman bears her offspring in the darkness of the womb: certainly that little
life is real enough for her, but it is hidden and not yet come to perfection.
The time for birth arrives, and—on account of the sin of our first mother,
Eve—she bears her painful sorrow. But what mother would go back on having been
delivered of a healthy child, despite the suffering involved? No, her joy far
outweighs any of the pain she suffers. Thanks be to God, all is well.
Sacred Scripture gives us another
such image:
And a great
sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon was under
her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she
cried out in her travail and was in the anguish of delivery. And another sign
was seen in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten
horns, and upon his heads seven diadems. And his tail was dragging along the
third part of the stars of heaven, and it dashed them to the earth; and the
dragon stood before the woman who was about to bring forth, that when she had
brought forth he might devour her son. And she brought forth a male child, who
is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to
God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a
place prepared by God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hundred
and sixty days.[3]
Once again, through suffering and
danger comes birth and safety. Sometimes this passage is used in reference to
the Virgin Mary and Christ; excepting that our Lady did not experience the
pangs of birth, that is a valid and traditional interpretation. But we also see
here an image of the Church, who is mother. The Church gives Christ to the
world as a mother, and he will rule the world with iron rod. The ancient
serpent, the devil, is ultimately thwarted, but not before he dashes a third of
the stars from the sky.
What might be gained from all that we
have been saying? Perhaps now we can answer our question about what liturgical
providence is teaching us. First, the Catholic life is fundamentally one of
travail and we see that this is the case both for ourselves personally and the
Church generally. Second, the Father is by no means deaf and blind to the
current suffering we experience; it has all been foreseen, indeed, it is known
to him in the everlasting Now of eternity. Third, the suffering that accompanies
us does not get the last word—“when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish.” The
world may rejoice at what we know to be lamentable—but their rejoicing will be
turned on its head, and our sorrow will turn into a joy like that of a new
mother.
The Catholic Christian lives in
between two strange worlds of contrasts; as St Paul put it, we are considered
“as deceivers and yet truthful, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and
behold, we live, as chastised but not killed, as sorrowful yet always
rejoicing, as poor yet enriching many, as having nothing yet possessing all
things.”[4]
Msgr Knox once preached: “We are
committed to a creed. The Catholic religion is very much more than a creed; it
is a life, a warfare, a loyalty, a romance.”[5] A romance, indeed. And how
do we live this romance? There are many answers, but I offer two. First, study
God’s liturgical providence. Are you looking for a sure guide amidst your
troubles? The sacred liturgy accompanies us through the travails that find us:
it is the only lodestar amidst the noise and dust of life.
Second, clothe yourselves in confidence,
confidence that is both childlike and Eucharistic—childlike because it awaits
everything from God, knowing that we have access to his grace in proportion to
our confidence in him; and eucharistic, because we need to be fed, and we are
fed not by human hopes and cleverness, but by God himself.
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