Earthenware jars ...

Four years ago I was lying in bed thinking about the passing of Pope John Paul II and, like so many people around the world, reflecting on the huge impact that his personal witness has made to the world during the course of his 26-year papacy.

I tried to imagine what it might be like to be on one’s death bed, with the entire world holding its breath, waiting for one to die. What a strange and curious way to go. Whilst many may not have agreed with him, it seems to me that the world respected him as a man of tremendous warmth and compassion and a brave witness in a society whose values were constantly challenged by the truths for which he so bravely stood.

What touched me about the pope’s death is that his task and his joy in life had been to carry out the will of God and he was therefore happy to pass on. How wonderful to be able to face the prospect of meeting one’s Maker (and Judge) serenely and joyfully, confident in the knowledge that you have done what was yours to do and to the best of your ability, that you have served God in all that he has asked of you.

With this thought in mind, I couldn’t help (though we shouldn’t really) but hold myself up in comparison with him and his witness. It was a depressing comparison until I consoled myself with the knowledge that he was, of course, unique and his role in this world was unique. In making comparisons we must be very careful not to devalue our own personal journey and witness, for isn’t our own role and personal response to God unique? No-one else can tread the path that I am treading: what is mine to do is mine to do. My role may be considerably more humble and less public, but is that any reason to suppose that my own personal witness and commitment is less worthy in the sight of God?

This brought to mind a couple of lovely passages from “Story of a Soul” by St Therese of Lisieux:

“I understood how all the flowers He has created are beautiful, how the splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the little violet or the wonderful simplicity of the daisy. And so it is in the world of souls. He willed to create great souls comparable to lilies and roses, but he has created smaller ones and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances when he looks down at his feet”.

And in another passage, St Therese questions why God appears to give glory in unequal measures …

“I was surprised that God did not give equal glory to all ….. Then Pauline told me to fetch Papa’s large tumbler and set it alongside my thimble and filled both to the brim with water. She asked me which one was fuller. I told her each was as full as the other and that it was impossible to put in more water than they could contain”

As with so many people (of all religious persuasions) at such a time, the death of the Pope caused us to question where we stand in regard to our relationship with God and also on many ethical and religious issues. I have a real sense that, just as the tsunami in 2005 gave the world an opportunity to unite, the passing of the Pope offered us a further opportunity to unite as one against the sleaze, the corruption, greed and transitory nature of current popular culture and to embrace the aspirations for a world built upon integrity, honesty, truth, purity of heart, mind and intention, peace and justice, fraternal love and respect: all these things which Pope John Paul II so valiantly championed and for which he is now, rightly, being proclaimed ‘Great’.

How are we to unite? Firstly, we need to make our own personal decisions about our own way of life. We need to look to our own consciences about how we are not co-operating with God in the way he is asking us to. Could I carry out that which is mine to carry out with a greater spirit of love and service to others? Could I be a more faithful and loving wife and mother, or husband and father? Could I give greater thanks to God for all that he gives to me every day? Could I be doing better in bringing my children up in the faith? Could I be doing more to protect the rights of those who are vulnerable and on the edge of society? Could I be far more generous with my money? And so much else.

Secondly, we have to unite with all people of goodwill against the pernicious forces which threaten the moral stability of this world. We need to stand up and be counted in the fight against all forms of human degradation, and this includes the – apparently – innocuous pornography and violence on our screens right through to freeing the world of all forms of slavery, especially the evil of child sex slavery.

Seeing the dead body of the Pope in the newspapers and TV at the time forcibly reminded me of St Paul's words (2 Cor 4:7) that the body really is just a worthless earthenware jar. Looking at his grey and completely lifeless face we could see for ourselves, quite clearly, that his soul had flown, leaving what can only be described as a greying and decaying shell. It is a powerful reminder and vivid example of the place that Spirit has – or should have – in our lives. True life is Spirit and we are brought to life by the Holy Spirit engaging with our soul - a process begun at Baptism - and enlivened throughout our lives by the sacraments. When the soul is separated from the body, we can see the grim result: stiff, cold death. Therefore, this logically says to me that our modern obsession with our physical bodies (so dangerous, anyway, for young impressionable minds) is as far removed from what true Life is all about. Our lives, if they are to be in any way meaningful, must be centred on the Spirit: only that can be true Life.

Was Judas Iscariot really that bad?

As we emerge from Holy Week when we listened twice to the passion of Jesus (on Palm Sunday and then again on Good Friday) there are some characters – other than Jesus himself – which leap out at me in the accounts of Jesus’ last 24 hours. There are two who really stand out: Peter and Judas Iscariot.

I’ll bet at the very mention of the names ‘Peter’ and ‘Judas’ most people immediately think of Peter the saint and Judas the sinner. In reality, I don’t believe that either was as good or as bad as the other, and that we can, in our own lives, probably relate to both. But, as far as history is concerned, there would seem to be a vast gap between these two men.

It was whilst Jesus was eating his final meal with his friends that Judas – one of those friends – slipped away from the gathering and out into the night in order to fulfil a promise he had made earlier to the Romans to lead them to Jesus. Later that night, whilst Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, the soldiers, led by Judas, came and arrested Jesus who was then taken away for questioning. Meanwhile, all Jesus’ friends had scattered and were no-where to be seen except for Peter, who was loitering around, warming himself by a fire. As Jesus had predicted, Peter denied not just once, but three times that he was a friend of Jesus or that he even knew him.

Jesus’ anguish at the prospect of the next 24 hours was compounded by the fact that two of his previously faithful friends had completely betrayed him. These two terrible betrayals lay as much guilt on Peter as on Judas: they are guilty to the same degree. Despite this, history has made a saint of Peter whilst pouring condemnation on Judas.

At this point in the story what, exactly, are they guilty of?

Whilst both are guilty of betrayal, Judas is guilty of greed and Peter of fear. There is not one of us who is not guilty of these things. We are guilty of greed by having or wanting more than we actually need; we are guilty of fear when we do not believe that God is looking after us; we are guilty of betrayal when we claim to be a Christian but fail to live like one. So far then, we too are on a level footing with both Judas and Peter.

Even after their betrayals, Judas and Peter remain on a level footing in that they are both overwhelmed by shame and guilt at the consequences of their actions. Peter weeps, openly, with remorse. I have no doubt that Judas also weeps. Therefore, what is it that makes the crucial difference between Peter and Judas, because so far they are entirely equal?

Judas, as we know, went off in his shame and hung himself. Peter, on the other hand, had a faith that somehow his guilt and shame could be healed. At that point, though, he can have had no real grasp of even the idea of Jesus coming back from the dead: he must have been staring into a huge abyss of uncertainty made worse by his remorse.

Some days later, the risen Jesus appears to Peter and asks him, “Do you love me?” and Peter says, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you”. Jesus doesn’t stop there, for he asks him twice more, “Do you love me?” and twice more Peter replies, “Yes, you know that I love you” (John 21:15-17). It seems to me that in this third declaration of his love for Jesus, all the hurt and damage which his three earlier denials had caused both to himself and Jesus, were healed over: all was put right.

As in any of the Gospel stories, we are in there somehow and all the people in the stories have something to tell us. What are these two characters saying to us about the way we live and our own journey towards a closer union with God?

We can relate to both Peter and Judas as people who were weak in their own particular way. Peter was a hot-tempered, impetuous and, as it turned out, at times cowardly man. But, it was on this very flawed person that Jesus chose to build his Church, “Peter, you are a rock, and on this rock foundation I will build my Church, and not even death will ever be able to overcome it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of heaven; what you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven, and what you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven” (Matt 16:16). These are astounding words from the Creator of the universe to someone as flawed as Peter and what it should say to us is this: God chooses unexpected people, even very weak and flawed people, to carry out his work. All we have to do is to recognise Jesus for who he is, come to him bringing all our faults and weaknesses and co-operate with him.

Judas was as flawed, in his way, as Peter was in his. One of the roles Judas had amongst the disciples was keeper of the communal purse. Everyone knew that he occasionally betrayed their trust by helping himself to the cash. However, it was not his weakness for money or his betrayal of Jesus which led to his ultimate downfall. It was his lack of hope, his lack of belief that he would find forgiveness. He felt that the better option was to hang himself rather than to apologise and seek forgiveness.

One of the wonderful messages of Easter is forgiveness. If Eastertide tells us anything at all about God it is of his overwhelming love for us all, no matter who we are or what we have done. God loves us all so much that he had his only Son nailed to a cross, where he left him for three hours to die in agony. Is it likely that he would give us this overwhelming witness of his love for us and then hold our sins and failings against us, particularly if we have come to him in sorrow and remorse? The goodness of God knows no bounds….if only Judas had understood and believed that.

Lord, we pray for all people who are burdened by sorrow or regret, that this Easter season will reveal to them just how much you love them and desire to heal them. Help us to sincerely believe in your forgiving love for us and heal us of all that has damaged our relationship with you so that like Peter, we can, in your name, work the wonders you have created us to work.

How can the crucifix be a symbol of life?!

Easter ... we are told that this is the most important celebration of the Church’s year, but it can sometimes be hard to grasp exactly why.

I am not sure that I fully understood the impact of Jesus’ death and resurrection upon me, personally, until I had thought about the implications of humanity’s original rejection of God. From the time of man's rejection of God onwards, humanity was effectively ‘locked out’ of heaven and all those who died went to 'hell'. In the Old Testament 'hell' was a realm not of punishment but of all the deceased, and to say that “one descended into hell” meant simply that one had died. We must try and imagine what this place might have been like. It was probably a place of no hope and of darkness, a godless place from which there was no apparent escape. Just pause for a moment and try to imagine how you might feel if you knew that you were shut out of heaven and condemned to eternal darkness. This is an horrendous thought and one which would make the prospect of our own death rather frightening. This would have been our fate had Jesus not intervened.

Why did Jesus have to die such a gruesome death?

He died the death that the ugliness and awfulness of our sin and the sin of humanity deserves. When Jesus hung in tortured agony on the cross, he was carrying the weight of your sins and mine. Weighed down as he was, what were his words? “Father, forgive them!” (Luke 23:34)....forgive all those who have hurt me or who will ever hurt me.... FORGIVE THEM! His thoughts, even then, were not for himself, but for us - you and me. He took all our sin and shame upon himself in order to take them and their power over our lives down into the depths of hell where they belong. “Father, Father... why have you deserted me?” (Mark 15:34) he cried out as he took on our sins and therefore felt the full force, pain and anguish of separation from God, the separation that only sin can bring, and the separation which would have been ours if not for Jesus.

Where did he go after he died?

He went to hell, to the realm of the dead. I can remember as a child being really afraid of the pitch black: that awful feeling of being disorientated and desperate for even the smallest chink of light. If hell was like this then the emergence into this torturous darkness of a figure of great light, bringing news that darkness and captivity were over must have been overwhelmingly wonderful. The beautiful Christ figure of Perfect Truth, Patience, Goodness, Generosity, Kindness, Mercy, Light & Love entered into hell in order to lead those God-fearing and faithful characters out of darkness and into eternal bliss and light. Can you imagine what that must have been like?

“Christ went down into the depths of death so that the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. Henceforth the risen Christ holds the keys of Death and Hades”(Catechism of the Catholic Church 635)

Jesus’ descent into the realm of death was to achieve a number of things:

• to overcome - for all time - the division between God and man and therefore also the power of sin and death;
• to take his message of freedom and salvation to all those who had died before him and who were languishing in this place of death, waiting to be delivered;
• to convince us that he, too, was human and that he understands how hard it is to die and to suffer any form of anguish
  

But what about the Resurrection?

To grasp the full impact of his resurrection, it is important to try and imagine the reality of Jesus' death. Jesus, the all-powerful Son of the Creator, was dead. The brutalised and tortured body of the Son of the great “I Am” of all eternity (John 8:58) lay stone cold. How easy it must have been for his friends to think that that was that, the person they thought was all-powerful and the Son of God perhaps wasn’t really what he appeared to be. He was dead wasn’t he? He could have saved himself, but didn’t.

Despite being in the realm of no hope, of death and darkness, Jesus was brought fully back to life both in body and spirit - he was resurrected. We can have absolute faith that this happened, because his friends were united in giving witness through their Gospel accounts of their own personal encounters with the risen Jesus.

His resurrection established victory and sovereignty over the power of death forever, and Heaven was opened up for all those who were to follow him. By this victory there was unleashed a power so great and so omnipotent that there is no power on earth - and never will be - that can ever defeat it. What is this power? It is the power of LIFE, a being at one with God. It is an extraordinary fact that this power is the same power that was given to us through the Holy Spirit at our Baptism. Since our Baptism we have carried with us the flame of eternal life; the flame of God's Spirit; we have already entered into eternity through this gift. This truth of faith can do so much for us! If we really believe in the omnipotence of God in our life we should be asking ourselves a) what is there to fear, and b) how do I respond to it and cooperate with it? Through the power of the Resurrection we have the promise of an eternal life spent in his glorious presence, and we can be sure that this will become a reality for us when we have done our best for him. Jesus, Perfect Good, in rising up, has opened up the way for us to follow him. He has blazed a trail for us into eternal life. If this had not taken place, there would be no hope for us at all: death would be death, the end, eternal darkness. We would still be languishing in the darkness of sin and unforgiven sin, with no hope of anything better.

Through Jesus' death and resurrection we are truly and fully alive, the power of sin in our lives has been vanquished, we have nothing to fear and everything to hope for!

Finally, let me offer you just one last thought. There is a very important aspect of His descent into hell that tends to get overlooked. Jesus’ descent into hell reminds us that we not only meet Jesus in the good and wonderful aspects of our life but, since he has ventured into the realm of darkness, we are now also able to meet him in our sad moments. He went down into hell in order that humanity might meet him there, in the awful moments of our lives. His descent has ensured that he can relate to our every misery and that, in all our sadnesses, we might still have the opportunity to encounter him and, through that encounter, be encouraged, strengthened and healed. Jesus, and his power to overcome, is to be found everywhere, even in the darkest areas of our lives and experience.

Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began..... He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him - He who is both their God and the son of Eve.... ‘I am your God, who for your sake have become your son....I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead’. (Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday)

Arise and shine like the sun; the brightness of his presence will be with you! (Isaiah 60:1)