April 12, 2009AD
The Resurrection of the Lord
What’s in a Psalm?
Last Sunday, we gathered to celebrate the death of the Lord. This weekend, God has flipped the coin as we gather to celebrate the Resurrection. We rejoice in two aspects of the same reality. However, emphasis changes.
First of all, how can we say that we celebrate anyone’s death, particularly that of Jesus of Nazareth? Celebrate seems in appropriate word when we talk about Someone’s dying. Even more so, it seems inappropriate when we think of how gruesome the final hours for Jesus were on Good Friday.
We can use the word “to celebrate” because we are confident that this death is interpreted with the all-important faith that God is stronger than death. No matter how bad it gets, God ultimately can salvage every situation. In the Middle Ages, Bl Juliana of Norwich said that God allowed the worst thing that could happen, viz., the death of the Creator’s Son made human, so that the best thing could happened, viz., the gift of the fullness of life for all people in, with and through this Victim and did so in the very same action!!!!
St Catherine of Genoa pondered on the Cross of Jesus Christ. She wrote that when she meditated the death of Jesus and asked the Crucified why Good Friday had to happen as it did, Jesus responded by hinting bluntly, ‘Catherine, if there were any other way, I would have been the first to suggest it!
Blessed Duns Scotus challenged the teaching of St Anselm of Canterbury who wrote that only a God-man could make reparation for human sin. Scotus asked what kind of a father demanded the bloody death of His Son to atone for sins? Scotus, the Subtle Doctor, concluded that such a bloody scene was to convince each of us and all of us how valuable each of us is to God. Looking at the extended arms of Jesus on the cross, one gets the answer. “God loves little old you this much. Believe it!!!!!!!!”
As St Paul tells us in 1 Cor 1.25, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom; God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Something more than human calculations is at work in this process. “Who knows the mind of God?” Therefore,” when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim (celebrate) the death of the Lord until He comes!” (1 Cor 11. 26)
Therefore, we can celebrate the death of the Lord Jesus, just as St Paul tells us. However, think back to our Palm Sunday Mass last weekend, Our responsorial Psalm was Psalm 22, which St Mark and St Matthew tell us, Jesus screamed on the cross on Good Friday. “My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me?” Jesus was not in a celebratory mode at that point as He breathed His last!
Psalm 22 was the expression of a believer whose faith is sorely tempted in crisis. The person wants to believe even though the circumstances are such that belief is hard. It is not the cry of a person who has rejected God. Rather, God seems to have rejected the one who is crying. The answer might lie in the fact that the Psalm goes back and forth between a temptation to abandonment and a hope of restoration. In fact, the Psalm ends on an extended hopeful note. In all probability, Jesus died on the cross of asphyxiation. He probably could not have spoken clearly in His final moments on the cross. St Mark suggests that this is the Psalm that Jesus (and each of us) should say in a crisis setting. It is a Psalm expressed in faith in God, no matter what.
Today, the responsorial Psalm is different, Psalm 118. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!” God has flipped the coin. God fulfills the promise of fidelity to Christ Jesus (and through, with and in Him) to all of us.
As one theologian in the area said, there is no such thing as a bad day. Each day is a gift of the Incomprehensible God of Life and of Love. True, some days are better than others. We would be heartless to say otherwise.
All creation (that means you and me) is participating in the Paschal Mystery. All creation experiences the divinely ordained process of ascent, descent and transformation. Nothing new happens without the transformation of what already existed. (Catholic physicists call the reality, the conservation of energy. Nothing is lost in the universe. Everything is the result of something else.)
What modern science is teaching is what God wants us to live our lives by each day. God operates in all settings. This Incomprehensible God of Life and Love is always faithful. We perceive God’s actions differently because we are changing. God’s job is to create and to unify all. God continues to create and to unite in life and love in all, including each of us, when we feel that all we can say is “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me? As well as when we feel that all we can say is “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia.”
