Third Sunday After Easter, April 24, 2016

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. 



[1] Mt 5:13.
[2] Mt 5:14.  
[3] Apoc 12:1-6; 1941 Confraternity ed.  
[4] 2 Cor 6:8-10, 1941 Confraternity ed.
[5] Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p 220.

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