Thomas to Jesus: "My Lord and my God"

A couple of years ago I came across the following meditation of the Rt Rev'd Graeme Rutherford, retired Assistant Bishop of Newcastle (Australia), and Benedictine oblate. I have forgotten how it came my way, but I put it aside for future use, and share it with you today when at Mass we hear the Gospel reading in which doubting Thomas acclaims Jesus to be his Lord and his God. In fact, it makes me think of a petition from my favourite Prayers of the Faithful for use at the Easter Vigil: 

With the first disciples 

we have received the gift of peace 

from the risen Jesus. 

Let us pray for all whose pain and anguish 

cause them to doubt God’s love. 

May they have the courage 

to reach out in faith to this same Jesus, 

and know his peace and joy in their lives. 

Thomas' picture of God had to include scars in his hands and wounds in his rib-cage: ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’. (John 20:25) 

The great Bible commentator and scholar, William Barclay, recounts a personal experience that powerfully affirms our ongoing need to examine our picture of God. The BBC had invited Barclay to do a series of talks on the subject of the miracles in the gospels. In his talks he stressed, as does St John, the sign or symbolic dimension of the miracles. Dr Barclay was later interviewed by the producer of the series and he asked how he had come to such a view: 

‘I told him the truth. I told him that some years ago our twenty-one year old daughter and the lad to whom she would some day have been married were both drowned in a yachting accident. I said that God did not stop that accident at sea, but he did still the storm in my own heart, so that somehow my wife and I came through that terrible time still on our own two feet’ 

When the interview was broadcast, letters poured in. Amongst them was an anonymous letter from Northern Ireland: 

‘Dear Dr Barclay. I know why God killed your daughter. It was to save her from being corrupted by your heresies’ 

Not having the writer’s address, Dr Barclay could not respond, however much he had wanted. In his autobiography he wrote: ‘If I had had that writer’s address I would have written back, not in anger - the inevitable blaze of anger was over in a flash, but in pity and I would have said to him, as John Wesley said to someone, “Your God is my devil”. The day my daughter was lost at sea there was sorrow in the heart of God’. 

The nail marks and wounds that Thomas sees mean that we have to think the unthinkable. God and crucifixion, God and suffering, God and humiliation, God and grief and pain, God and tragedy: these are not exclusive opposites. 

What is your picture of God like? Some people, for instance, have great difficulty in holding on to a picture of God as love. The reason may lie no deeper than ignorance of who God is as Jesus in the Bible has revealed God to be. They have never read a Gospel or studied a single book about it. Whereas others have a faulty picture of God that goes back to badly tangled family relationships that have left them unable to see any authority as good or loving. Some dysfunctional pictures of God come from the fact that we have been wrongly taught from an early age, and others from the fact that we have been wrongly treated. 

But whatever the cause, if we are to get our picture of God clearer, we are to look in the direction of Jesus. Gazing at the wounds of the risen Jesus, Thomas declares, ‘My Lord and my God’. Jesus, the New Testament writers tell us, ‘is the image of the invisible God’. In a famous remark, Michael Ramsay captured the meaning of the staggering claim of Thomas and the other New Testament writers:’God is Christlike and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all’.

"a new mode of being has arisen in the universe" - C.S. Lewis on the Resurrection

. . . as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they Ire clumsy, they don’t work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there are no conversations that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. In the story of the woman taken in adultery we are told Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has ever based any doctrine on it. And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art. Surely the only explanation of this passage is that the thing really happened? The author put it in simply because he had seen it. 

Then we come to the strangest story of all, the story of the Resurrection. It is very necessary to get the story clear. I heard a man say, “The importance of the Resurrection is that it gives evidence of survival, evidence that the human personality survives death.” On that view what happened to Christ would be what had always happened to all men, the difference being that in Christ’s case we were privileged to see it happening. This is certainly not what the earliest Christian writers thought. Something perfectly new in the history of the Universe had happened. Christ had defeated death. The door which had always been locked had for the very first time been forced open. This is something quite distinct from mere ghost-survival. I don’t mean that they disbelieved in ghost- survival. On the contrary, they believed in it so firmly that, on more than one occasion, Christ had had to assure them that He was not a ghost. The point is that while believing in survival they yet regarded the Resurrection as something totally different and new. The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the universe. Something new had appeared in the universe: as new as the first coming of organic life. This Man, after death, does not get divided into “ghost” and “corpse”. A new mode of being has arisen. That is the story. What are we going to make of it? 

From C.S. Lewis, “What are we to make of Jesus Christ?” (1950) See The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996) pages 331-332.

The Second Global Atheist Convention

Relgious belief and atheism are two ways of responding to our life experiences. Each can be intuitive and emotional. Each can also be highly reasoned. Religious people and atheists alike construct detailed arguments for their respective world views on the basis of assumptions that strictly speaking cannot be absolutely "proven", but arise from what is sometimes called a perceived "accumulation of probabilities." Agnostisism is, of course, a completely different phenomenon. 

Today in Melbourne, Australia, the Second Global Atheist Convention began. The stellar cast of keynote speakers includes former Christian clergy who have become atheists, and, of course, Richard Dawkins.

On Easter Monday, Dawkins engaged in a mediated television debate with Cardinal George Pell. You can view it HERE. 

In my opinion, a far better engagement of Dawkins with the assumptions underlying religious belief is his recent conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, which is HERE. 

From a slightly different angle, Simon Smart and Justine Toh of the Centre for Public Christianity in Sydney discuss the relationship between reason and faith. Go HERE for the audio. 

Also visiting Australia is well-known former atheist and now Christian theologian, Alister McGrath. Here he comments on the Global Atheist Convention: 

McGrath is, in fact, visiting for the REASON FOR FAITH FESTIVAL, whose organisers - an ecumenical group of thinking believers - challenge those attending the Global Atheist Convention to change their tickets, stay on for the event that follows, and join in the public conversation on the questions raised by the Global Atheist Convention. Go HERE for details.

"… a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have"

Here is the Gospel reading from today's (Easter Thursday) Mass, and then a meditation by Fr Daniel O’Shea OP, from Today’s Good News website.

Luke 24:35-48: 

Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, "Peace to you." But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 

And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them, "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled." 

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. 

Meditation:

“He stood among them.” John said (20:19) that they were huddled together, with the doors locked, for fear of the Jews; then he uses the same words as Luke: “Jesus stood among them.” He did not have to fumble with a key, or knock loudly (which would have made them lock the door even more securely) or call out (they would not have believed). He just stood suddenly inside the circle of their fear. Left to ourselves we would remain imprisoned forever inside that locked door, and all efforts to bring us out would have the opposite effect. The Risen Lord comes to meet us where we are, comes without violence, without argument or explanation, comes to liberate us into joy. 

They had so recently deserted him, but he “stood among them,” and greeted them with peace. Everything in Luke’s account is intended to express the reality of Jesus' presence. By eating he is demonstrating that he is not a ghost. In John's account, Jesus shows his hands and feet to show the marks of the nails, but in Luke's account there is no mention of the wounds. Showing them “his hands and his feet” was intended to show them his physical reality (“flesh and bones” rather than ghostly), but not necessarily the marks of crucifixion. The idiom “flesh and bones” derives from “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” of Genesis 2:23 (Adam so describing Eve), so the reference was to equal and shared humanity. 

To say things is easy: just creating a slight disturbance in the air. When we've said a lot of things we have the impression that we've done something, but we've only been breathing in a more complicated way. You can say the earth is 4.5 billion years old, but what have you said? You can say God made the world, but do you have any idea what you said? A good test of whether you understand something is to get yourself to say it without words – to say it with the body. The body is our first language. The verbal language we speak is shadowy beside it. 
 
 

Our “flesh and bones” are material of the resurrection. The Russian theologian, Paul Evdokimov, wrote about the ways in which matter and nature (including human nature) are represented in some forms of modern art. We are looking, he said, at a “closed and atheistic world...a world of still life and dead matter which is no longer the substance of the resurrection.” But the Christian faith affirms that this mortal body of ours, because Christ shared our human nature, is destined for things beyond our power to imagine.

* * *

Because the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is no mere "resuscitation", it is important not to reduce his risen eschatological bodiliness to the terms of the pre-resurrection world. Fr Herbert McCabe, in his book God Matters, says: 

I think that in these appearances Christ was more bodily than he allowed himself to appear. In himself he was the risen man, his body was that of the future to which we are summoned, the future beyond the ultimate revolution, but in order to show himself to his followers he appeared more or less as a body of our own time, a body of this world—it is true that he passed through closed doors and appeared and disappeared and so on, but generally speaking he wished to emphasize that he was a body and not a ghost. “‘See my hands and feet that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them: ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them.” The emphasis in this as in the other stories of post-resurrection appearances is on the bodily reality of the risen Christ, but we are not to suppose that his bodiliness is restricted to the bodiliness of this era. 

For our present purposes the interest of this point is that in these appearances Jesus presents an intersection of future and present. He is the future world, the body in whom our bodies are to find unity and final humanity, the medium of communication in which mankind is ultimately to realise itself, he is the future world but he appears as a body of the present world . . . Although in fact he has surpassed the present and belongs not to this world but to the world of the future, he is presenting himself amongst men of this world and he can only be recognised by them in terms of a part of his biography that he has surpassed. (pp. 125-126)

Emmaus - He was known to them in the Breaking of the Bread

Paul Meyendorff, Professor of Liturgical Theology at St Vladimir's Seminary, New York, writes: 

After his resurrection, on the first day of the week, Jesus meets two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they fail to recognize him. They describe to him the peculiar events that had taken place earlier that day, including the report they had received from the women who had discovered the empty tomb and had had a vision of angels. Jesus then proceeds to interpret to them "in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27), but still they do not realize who is speaking to them. Only after he "took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them" (Luke 24:30), do they recognize the Lord. Returning to Jerusalem, the disciples tell the eleven "how he was known to them in the breaking of bread" (Luke 24:35). Luke, alone among the evangelists, recounts this incident, and he does so in great detail. And these details tell us a great deal about how the Apostolic Church lived. 

First, it is clear that this passage refers to the Eucharist. Jesus' actions over the bread (taking, blessing, breaking, giving) directly echo what he did at the Last Supper. The recipients of the gospel, accustomed to celebrating the Lord's Supper, would have immediately recognized this, just as did the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. We who receive the gospel today, just as the two disciples that day, were not at the Last Supper, yet we too recognize the Lord in the breaking of bread. 

The eucharistic sense of this passage is further emphasized by the fact that this encounter takes place on the "first day of the week." From the very beginning, the church would gather on this day to break bread. The gospels were written for a church that had already for thirty to forty years been celebrating the Eucharist on the first day of every week in fulfillment of the Lord's command, "Do this in memory of me." Quite naturally, the gospel account reflects the liturgical practices of the Early Church. 

But it is a third point that is perhaps the most important. After his resurrection, Jesus remained on earth for only a short time until his ascension. After forty days, the Lord no longer appeared to the disciples or to anyone else. Yet, through the Holy Spirit, he remained with the Church, precisely in the breaking of bread. The chief message of this gospel passage, therefore, is that if we recognize the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, we no longer need miraculous appearances of the Lord. And, until Christ returns in glory, we have the certainty that he remains with us when we partake of his Body and Blood. 

It is no accident, therefore, that the eucharistic liturgy has always been at the very center of the life of the Church, which is the Body of Christ, as well as of each individual Christian, who is a member of that Body. Truly, he is known to us in the breaking of bread.

*****

See also:

They Knew Him in the Breaking of the Bread - a sermon I preached in Eastertide, 2003.

Maria, noli me tangere - Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Jesus

"Rabboni" 

(Go HERE for details of the painting)

Today's Gospel is John 20:11-18, the encounter of the risen Jesus with Mary Magdalene in the garden. On Easter Sunday, 2003, the Most Rev'd Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached on this passage: 

'Jesus said, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father."'

Mary Magdalene wants Jesus back as she remembers him; failing that, she wants his corpse in a definite place, she wants a grave she can tend. Jesus appears to her – in one of the most devastatingly moving moments of the whole Bible – and her first instinct is to think that yes, he is back as she remembers, yes, she has hold of him after all. He has not disappeared, he has not been taken away to an unknown destination. 

But Jesus warns her: he is being taken to a destination more unknown than she could imagine. He is going to the Father. From now on, there will be no truthful way of speaking or thinking about him except as the one who lives alongside the source of all things. These simple, abrupt words already contain all the mysteries we celebrate when we say the creeds, when we break the bread of the Holy Communion; they tell us that Jesus gives exactly what the Father gives – life, glory, forgiveness, transfiguration. Through death he has passed into the heart of reality; he has returned where he came from. At the very beginning of John's gospel, we read of the Word of God living 'nearest to the Father's heart' from all eternity. He comes to us in the flesh and blood of Jesus and shows the glory, the radiant, solid life, of God pouring out in love: the fullest showing of that love is in his free acceptance of suffering and death, and if we are able to accept that this death sets us free once and for all, the glory of the divine life is shared with us. Jesus goes to the Father and from his place next to the Father's heart sends out the gift of the Spirit of Truth which allows us a share in his own closeness to the Father. 

Yet to realise this is to realise that we cannot have Jesus just on our terms. After the resurrection, with its demonstration that Jesus's life is as indestructible as God the Father's life, we can't simply go back to the Jesus who is humanly familiar; and –obviously – we can't have Jesus as a warm memory, a dear departed whose grave we can visit. He is alive and ahead of us, clearing a path to the Father's heart. Christian faith does not look back to a great teacher and example but forward to where Jesus leads, to that ultimate being-at-home with God which he has brought to life in the history of our world. 

So: 'Do not cling to me', he says; instead, go and bring others along on the journey. 

The rest of the sermon is HERE.

Pope Benedict's URBI ET ORBI blessing: "Every Christian relives the experience of Mary Magdalene …"

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass this Easter Sunday in St Peter's Square, after which he offered the "urbi et orbi" benediction - the blessing of the city and the world - which it is tradition for the Pope to give at Easter and at Christmas. The Holy Father focused on the radical and permanent newness of Christ's resurrection. (From the Vatican Radio website)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world! “Surrexit Christus, spes mea” – “Christ, my hope, has risen” (Easter Sequence). 

May the jubilant voice of the Church reach all of you with the words which the ancient hymn puts on the lips of Mary Magdalene, the first to encounter the risen Jesus on Easter morning. She ran to the other disciples and breathlessly announced: “I have seen the Lord!” (Jn 20:18). We too, who have journeyed through the desert of Lent and the sorrowful days of the Passion, today raise the cry of victory: “He has risen! He has truly risen!” 

Every Christian relives the experience of Mary Magdalene. It involves an encounter which changes our lives: the encounter with a unique Man who lets us experience all God’s goodness and truth, who frees us from evil not in a superficial and fleeting way, but sets us free radically, heals us completely and restores our dignity. This is why Mary Magdalene calls Jesus “my hope”: he was the one who allowed her to be reborn, who gave her a new future, a life of goodness and freedom from evil. “Christ my hope” means that all my yearnings for goodness find in him a real possibility of fulfilment: with him I can hope for a life that is good, full and eternal, for God himself has drawn near to us, even sharing our humanity. 

But Mary Magdalene, like the other disciples, was to see Jesus rejected by the leaders of the people, arrested, scourged, condemned to death and crucified. It must have been unbearable to see Goodness in person subjected to human malice, truth derided by falsehood, mercy abused by vengeance. With Jesus’ death, the hope of all those who had put their trust in him seemed doomed. But that faith never completely failed: especially in the heart of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ Mother, its flame burned even in the dark of night. In this world, hope can not avoid confronting the harshness of evil. It is not thwarted by the wall of death alone, but even more by the barbs of envy and pride, falsehood and violence. Jesus passed through this mortal mesh in order to open a path to the kingdom of life. For a moment Jesus seemed vanquished: darkness had invaded the land, the silence of God was complete, hope a seemingly empty word. 

And lo, on the dawn of the day after the Sabbath, the tomb is found empty. Jesus then shows himself to Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to his disciples. Faith is born anew, more alive and strong than ever, now invincible since it is based on a decisive experience: “Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life’s own champion, slain, now lives to reign”. The signs of the resurrection testify to the victory of life over death, love over hatred, mercy over vengeance: “The tomb the living did enclose, I saw Christ’s glory as he rose! The angels there attesting, shroud with grave-clothes resting”.

Dear brothers and sisters! If Jesus is risen, then – and only then – has something truly new happened, something that changes the state of humanity and the world. Then he, Jesus, is someone in whom we can put absolute trust; we can put our trust not only in his message but in Jesus himself, for the Risen One does not belong to the past, but is present today, alive. Christ is hope and comfort in a particular way for those Christian communities suffering most for their faith on account of discrimination and persecution. And he is present as a force of hope through his Church, which is close to all human situations of suffering and injustice. 

May the risen Christ grant hope to the Middle East and enable all the ethnic, cultural and religious groups in that region to work together to advance the common good and respect for human rights. Particularly in Syria, may there be an end to bloodshed and an immediate commitment to the path of respect, dialogue and reconciliation, as called for by the international community. May the many refugees from that country who are in need of humanitarian assistance find the acceptance and solidarity capable of relieving their dreadful sufferings. May the paschal victory encourage the Iraqi people to spare no effort in pursuing the path of stability and development. In the Holy Land, may Israelis and Palestinians courageously take up anew the peace process. 

May the Lord, the victor over evil and death, sustain the Christian communities of the African continent; may he grant them hope in facing their difficulties, and make them peacemakers and agents of development in the societies to which they belong. 

May the risen Jesus comfort the suffering populations of the Horn of Africa and favour their reconciliation; may he help the Great Lakes Region, Sudan and South Sudan, and grant their inhabitants the power of forgiveness. In Mali, now experiencing delicate political developments, may the glorious Christ grant peace and stability. To Nigeria, which in recent times has experienced savage terrorist attacks, may the joy of Easter grant the strength needed to take up anew the building of a society which is peaceful and respectful of the religious freedom of its citizens. 

Happy Easter to all!

Easter Day: He is risen. Alleluia!

This is the day, Lord God, that you have made! 

Raising Christ from the dead, and raising us with Christ, 

you have fashioned for yourself a new people, 

washed in the flood of baptism, 

sealed with gift of the Spirit, 

invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb! 

In the beauty of this Easter 

help us to set our minds on the new life 

to which you have anointed us; 

that we may celebrate the festival 

with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 

As we hear the word that brings salvation, 

make our hearts burn within us. 

Through the presence of every friend and stranger, 

reveal to us the face of him who had first to suffer, 

but who now has entered into glory, 

Jesus Christ, our Passover and our Peace, 

who lives and reigns with you 

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

one God for ever and ever. Amen. 

To family and friends, and to all readers of this blog around the world . . . May the Lord bless you and keep you. May you know his risen presence from day to day. Happy Easter!

Water, Fire & Breakfast - An Easter Vigil Sermon by Bp N.T. Wright

The great Easter Vigil Mass is the most important church service of the whole year. It must begin after nightfall and before dawn. Many parishes have it on the evening of Holy Saturday. Some still hold it at midnight. Others begin it just before sunrise - often the case in England. This sermon was preached at the Easter Vigil in Durham Cathedral, on Easter Day (3rd April) 2010 by Dr N.T. "Tom" Wright, Bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010, and now Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. (He is widely respected ecumenically for his scholarship and in particular his historical apologetics. He was the Anglican observer and an invited speaker at the Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops in 2008 on "the Word of God." His home page is HERE.) 

If you remember little else about this morning, you will probably remember it as the day you got up at half past three in the morning to go to church. I hope you remember a lot more than that, but that’s a good start: because the whole point of Easter, and of baptism and confirmation, is that it’s all about getting up ridiculously early, being splashed with water to wake you up, and perhaps, in old-fashioned houses at least, lighting a fire somewhere so that the house can warm up for everyone else. Then, when all that’s done, you can think about some breakfast. Well, that’s what we’re about this morning – the water, the fire, and the breakfast: and all because Easter is about waking up ridiculously early while everybody else is asleep. That’s why, at the first Easter, everyone was shocked and startled – the women perplexed and terrified, the men disbelieving and amazed. This was all wrong. Things shouldn’t happen like this. The world was surprised and unready. It was still asleep. And it still is. 

You see, the popular perception of Easter lets us down in a big way. I don’t just mean the chocolate eggs and fluffy chicks and rabbits. In a sense, they are all just good fun. Nobody in their right mind would mistake them for the real thing. No: the danger lies deeper. Many people in our culture, including many Christians, think of Easter basically as a happy ending after the horror and shame of Good Friday: ‘Oh, that’s all right, he came back to life, well, sort of, and so he’s in heaven now so that’s all OK, isn’t it?’ And the answer to that should be, ‘No, that’s not OK; that’s not what Easter is about at all.’ The whole point of Easter is that God is going to sort out the whole world, put the whole thing to rights once and for all – this world, not just somewhere called ‘heaven’ – and the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of that great work. 

What’s that got to do with getting up two hours before sunrise, and with the water, the fire and the breakfast? Well, pretty much everything. You see, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it’s still night-time. Nothing new has really happened. The world would much prefer to believe that Christianity is simply another ‘religion’, offering another strange spiritual option, with a few odd miracles to back up its claims, but that really nothing’s changed. Corruption and death still rule the world, and Easter simply whispers that there’s a way of escape if we want it. No! Believe it or disbelieve it (though you, here, had better believe it!), the point of Easter is that when Jesus came out of the tomb he was alive again in a bodily life which was the start of the new physical world which God is going to make. And that means that God’s time has jumped forwards, so that what we thought would happen at the very end – God putting everything to rights at last – has leapt forwards into the present, into the middle of our time, our history. When the early Christians told the story of Jesus’ resurrection, that’s what they were saying: God’s new world has begun, and you are invited to be part of that new world – part of the world which lives on God’s time, and lives in God’s new way. 

And it’s all because of Jesus, and his dying and rising again. God’s new time is the time when new life happens, but new life can only happen when death has been overcome. God’s new world is the world where sins are forgiven, but forgiveness can only happen when sins have been dealt with. God’s new life is the genuinely human life, the life that fully reflects who God actually is, but we can only even dream of that holiness if something happens to us and in us so that we ourselves make the transition from the way of death – which is what seems, to us, the ‘ordinary’ way of living – to the way of life. And the way we are brought into that new time, that new world, and that new life, is through being plunged into the death and resurrection of Jesus so that his death becomes ours, and his resurrection becomes ours. 

Jesus himself showed how we are to do this. When we are baptized, we are drowned in his death and come out the other side into his new life, his new world, his new time. This is the meaning of the water of baptism. 

But to be complete, we creatures of earth need not only the water but also the fire. When people come to confirmation they not only ‘confirm’ the promises made at their baptism – promises about dying with Jesus and rising again with him – but also pray for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the living fire of God’s own presence and power, and that fire comes to live inside us – us together, and us individually – so that we can live the new life, be part of the new world, and in particular live on God’s time, which is always ahead of the sleepy time of the rest of the world. When you pray for the Holy Spirit, and when together as a church we pray for the Spirit to come upon us – and today in particular upon you – God answers that prayer in all sorts of different ways. Sometimes it’s quite dramatic, and that’s fine. Sometimes it’s slow and quiet, and you will only gradually realise that things are different. You are to take responsibility for thinking it through and working out what God is now calling you do be and to do, what his new life will look like in and through you. As the Americans say, ‘You do the math’: figure out what are the ways in which he is calling you to wake up and live on a different time to the rest of the world, and in particular the ways in which he is lighting a fire inside you not simply to warm you up but so that, through you, he can warm up the rest of the world. 

Because that’s the point of all this. Confirmation isn’t simply about God’s gift of himself, his own Spirit, to live within you. Confirmation is about God’s gift of himself through you to the rest of the world – more particularly, to the bits of the world where he has called you and put you. You are God’s Easter-presents to your family, to your school, your place of work, to our country and our world. The early Christians used to dress people up in white clothes after baptism, to symbolize the new life they had now entered. Perhaps we should dress you up as large chocolate eggs, to make the point that God is giving you to the world all around as a delightful and delicious Easter-present. I know people don’t usually think of Christians that way, but perhaps it’s time they did. After all, in many towns and cities and villages it’s mostly Christians who are volunteering to help in the hospice, or visiting in the prisons, or doing meals on wheels, or whatever. Yes, several people do these things who are not Christians, but again and again you’ll find they are. It’s Christians, mostly, who are campaigning on behalf of asylum seekers, who are working as Town Pastors in the confused night-time world of our city streets. Christians should be at the forefront of the world’s celebrations and its tragedies: rejoice, said Paul, with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. You are the salt of the earth, said Jesus; you are the light of the world. You are the fire that God is lighting in our cold, dark, nighttime world, the fire that says it’s morning-time and the place needs warming up. Christians are people who have been washed in the water and filled with the fire, abandoning the old life and bringing the new one to birth in a surprised and unready world. 

And the water-and-fire people are then the breakfast-people. You can’t sustain the new life by yourself. You can’t live in God’s new world, on God’s new time, without constant help. And the help we need is Jesus himself – his death to go on dealing with our sins and failings, his new life to go on becoming ours, for us and through us. As we come to his feast, the bread and the wine become heavy with fresh meaning, Passover-meaning, Jesus-meaning, meaning for us and for the world through us. This, too, is shocking and puzzling to many people. How on earth can this simple, symbolic meal carry all that power? 

The short answer is: because Jesus said it would when he told us to do it. The deeper reasons are all there to be explored in due course. But today, as we come to the first Eucharist of this Easter, you come with special joy, because you are today’s water-and-fire people, and, as we share in this breakfast with you, you remind us that all of us who belong to Jesus are water-and-fire people, all of us Easter-presents to and for God’s whole world. Thank you for standing up and being counted today. Thank God for all that he’s doing in your lives and through you for the rest of us. No doubt there will be times when you, like the rest of us and like those first disciples, will be perplexed and amazed, perhaps even disbelieving and terrified. But Jesus Christ is risen again! He is on the loose, on the move, at work in his world and in our midst, and you today are the living witnesses to the power of his death and resurrection and Spirit. Remember the water; pray for the fire; come to the breakfast, and be ready then to go out live as God’s Easter presents to his surprised and unready world.

Good Friday: God in the depths

The Good Friday Sepulchre at St Stephen's Basilica, Budapest, Hungary.

Gold and silver crosses worn as ornaments (sometimes even by those who don't believe). Jewel encrusted crosses crowning the altars of great cathedrals. Roadside crosses marking the locations of tragic motor vehicle accidents. 

Whichever way you look at it, the cross still has a place, not just in Christian devotion, but also in our culture, on account of the death of Jesus. 

Cicero famously commented: "It is the most cruel and shameful of all punishment. Let it never come near the body of a Roman citizen - not even his thoughts or eyes or ears". Crucifixion was for criminals; it involved unbearable thirst, stabbing pain, psychological torture and a slow lingering death. 

Christian devotion to the cross - evident from the earliest days, as we see from the holy graffiti on the walls of the Catacombs in Rome - struck non-Christians as peculiar. As Richard Holloway once pointed out, the modern equivalent might well be a decorated gallows, or even a brightly painted model of a brain tumour hung over an altar. 

Yet for us the cross - the sign of weakness, tragedy and defeat - is the centre of life, the centre of history and the centre of the universe. He who hangs there is entirely innocent. His sufferings are undeserved. He is betrayed by a friend and executed after a mock trial. 

He had said to his followers: "The Son of Man will give his life as a ransom for many", and "When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto myself". Behind this death is the design of God's Redeeming Love. Indeed, our faith has taught us audaciously to say that it is God who dies on Calvary's hill. 

On the cross God enters the depths of our human experience, even the tragedy of the sense of ultimate forsakenness that haunts our culture and dominates so much contemporary art, music and literature. 

He hangs there, bearing the weight of our sins, so that we can be forgiven. 

He suffers in his human flesh, and he reaches out to you and to me from within his sufferings to embrace and strengthen us. From the cross he gathers to himself the brokenness and sinfulness of the whole world, transforming it from within by the power of his suffering love. 

On the cross hangs the human flesh of God, suspended between heaven and earth, unleashing torrents of forgiving, redeeming love into the world we had made the gutter of the universe. 

From the cross the anguished gaze of suffering love melts our hearts into a response that at least in its intention can be no less than total. 

The early Christians do not see the cross as a miserable defeat followed by the Father's intervention to turn things around at the Resurrection. No! For them the cross itself is the victory. On the cross our salvation is won; on the cross Jesus triumphs over the powers of darkness and hell; from the cross, he draws everything in heaven and everything in earth into the cosmic embrace of his outstretched arms. Resurrection is the logical consequence of the victory of Redeeming Love; it is the public demonstration that the victory has been won. 

Questions still remain. The ambiguities of life abide. Your heart and mine are still ripped open by life's injustices and the unexplained suffering of good people and children. But for two thousand years, those who have  - however reluctantly - given in to Redeeming Love have come to know the reality of Jesus' presence and that same love in the in the struggles, contradictions and tragedies as well as in the unspeakable joys of our human story. 

The Church is not primarily an "institution" to be understood in organizational terms. It is first and foremost the community of love gathered around the risen Jesus, whose victory, risen life and healing power keep breaking into our lives through prayer and the sacraments, even if it is sometimes in our pain that we share the Redeeming Love he personifies. 

In joining together at Mass on the Lord's Day - Sunday - the Day of Resurrection, we not only commemorate the story of Jesus - something that happened a long time ago; by faith - however tenuous - we allow Jesus to merge his story and our stories together, and experience each time a little more of the reality of death giving way to new life.

Maundy Thursday washing of the feet

Here is the 2004 Maundy Thursday homily of Fr John Klassen OSB,  Abbot of St John's Abbey, Collegeville, MN USA. 

In her long poem "Feet" Denise Levertov wrote:

"I watched a man whose feet were neatly wrapped in green plastic.
He entered a restaurant that advertised a $2.00 special — Sloppy Joes.
And I saw him come out immediately again.

"It was cold and wet,
and I was taking shelter under the awning,
waiting for a bus.
The man was angry.

"'What happened?'
He looked at me —
'No shoes,' he said.
We all know the rubric —
No shoes, no shirt, no service."

You can drag dirt into an eatery with shoes
but not with feet covered in plastic.

On this holy night,
we remember the Passover of the Lord.
The readings are a treasury of meaning
and hold together in powerful ways.

The foot-washing scene in John's Gospel
has no parallel in ritual meals of the Judaism of Jesus' time.
It is innovation, par excellence.
In the time of Jesus
the streets would have been filled
with human and animal waste.
The washing of feet was usually done by a slave.
That is why the disciples are stunned
when Jesus takes off his outer garment
and puts a towel over his shoulders
and begins to wash their feet.
Peter, of course, speaks what everyone is thinking and feeling.
The first level of meaning is that of humble service.

But there is another level of meaning as well.
In biblical times the hands and feet symbolize human activity.
It is with hands and feet that we sin.
With the echo of Psalm 51 in our minds,
to wash them, to cleanse them,
is to wash away sin,
it is to forgive.

When Jesus urges his disciples to repeat this action
he is not merely talking about washing of feet.
He is insisting that we forgive one another
as he has forgiven us,
that we love one another
as he has loved us.

What about hands?

We remember Jesus
as taking, breaking, giving bread and wine.
The handing over of food and drink
became an embodied symbol
of that other "handing over,"
the "handing over" when Christ,
betrayed into the hands of sinners,
surrendered his body to death on the cross.

Human hands connect Eucharist and cross,
Holy Thursday and Good Friday;
hands outstretched to take, break and give;
hands cupped to hold, receive, eat and drink;
hands nailed east and west on a cross.

On this holy night,
we pledge once again to use our hands and feet
for the work of forgiveness,
for the work of loving each other.
We pledge to wash each other's feet,
to hand over our lives for each other,
for the sake of the world.
We pledge ourselves to do Eucharist,
to do this in memory of the One who gave His life for us.
We do so because Jesus is our Passover Lamb,
who takes away the sins of the world.

Judas . . . melodrama villain, or just like us?

Sydney Smith (1771-1845) one-time Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, said with characteristic wit: “I must believe in the Apostolic Succession, there being no other way of accounting for the descent of the Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot.” 

Poor old Judas Iscariot! Our simplistic reaction to his role in the Passion is to hiss and boo when he appears as if he is the stylised villain in a Victorian melodrama. But that, it seems to me, trivialises Gospel passages such as the one we read at today's Mass (Matthew 26:14-25): 

"Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, 'What will you give me if I deliver him to you?' And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him. 

"Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the passover?' He said, 'Go into the city to a certain one, and say to him, "The Teacher says, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at your house with my disciples."' And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover. 

"When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples; and as they were eating, he said, 'Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.' And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another, 'Is it I, Lord?' He answered, 'He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, will betray me. The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.' Judas, who betrayed him, said, 'Is it I, Master?' He said to him, 'You have said so.'" 

Between December 1941 and October 1942 the BBC broadcasted Dorothy Sayers’ series of radio plays on the life of Jesus, "Man Born to be King." Her brief remarks on the Gospels were from the standpoint of a playwright trying to create a believable human context based on the texts themselves. 

When I first read Sayers' characterisation of Judas Isacariot, I couldn’t work out why I hadn’t seen him that way for myself ... a young, idealistic man, sincerely looking for the coming of God's Kingdom, who REALLY believes in Jesus as the one who can and will bring in the kingdom and get rid of the Roman occupying forces. As time goes on, however, Judas grows impatient and even disillusioned. Why isn’t Jesus using his “powers” to do what needs to be done? So - as a last resort - Judas decides to force Jesus' hand by putting him into a situation where he will either have to act decisively to overthrow the Romans or else face humiliation and death. Jesus, of course, does not act as Judas thinks he should, and instead treads the Calvary road of suffering and pain in order to redeem us, not from the Roman taskmasters, but from slavery to sin and death. 

Dorothy Sayers' Judas is very believable, very human, and far more realistic than the melodramatic villain! After all, how many REAL BELIEVERS, like Judas, love Jesus, but also try to manipulate him for our own ends (or for the sake of our ministries or churches!), thinking that by so doing we are working for the Kingdom of God? 

All we end up doing is betraying Jesus afresh. 

*****

I’m not the only one who likes Sayers’ interpretation of Judas. Go HERE to read another commentator’s article comparing the mistaken Judas with the comforters of Job. I give you two extracts:

". . . Sayers does an excellent job of portraying Judas as she intends. There is always a hint, even when Judas is at his most sincerely devoted to Jesus, that it is always in his eyes Judas standing in judgment of Jesus (even if only to approve him) and never once Judas standing before Jesus in order to be judged. Judas knows what Israel needs; the question on Judas' mind all along is: Does Jesus know what Israel needs? He is walking, as Sayers says of him later, by sight and not by faith: so long as Jesus obviously seems conforming to his standards, Judas is the most loyal of followers. Once Jesus doesn't seem to be, however, Judas assumes that Jesus has sold out (and, worse, it turns out that Judas was simply mistaken in his interpretation of Jesus' actions) . . . 

". . . It seems to me that this is always a very deep danger; and that the more educated and intelligent people are, the more likely they are to make it. Hence the need for us all to cultivate the virtue of intellectual humility."

Dealing with BETRAYAL - Tuesday in Holy Week

Over at the Catholic Spirituality Centre is a great meditation by Father William Goh on the first part of today's Gospel - John 13:21-33: 

"While at supper with his disciples, Jesus was troubled in spirit and declared, ‘I tell you most solemnly, one of you will betray me.’ The disciples looked at one another, wondering which he meant. The disciple Jesus loved was reclining next to Jesus; Simon Peter signed to him and said, ‘Ask who it is he means’, so leaning back on Jesus’ breast he said, ‘Who is it, Lord?’ ‘It is the one’ replied Jesus ‘to whom I give the piece of bread that I shall dip in the dish.’ He dipped the piece of bread and gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. At that instant, after Judas had taken the bread, Satan entered him. Jesus then said, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’ None of the others at table understood the reason he said this. Since Judas had charge of the common fund, some of them thought Jesus was telling him, ‘Buy what we need for the festival’, or telling him to give something to the poor. As soon as Judas had taken the piece of bread he went out. Night had fallen." 

One of the most painful experiences of life is to be betrayed by those whom we love dearly and deeply. The deeper the trust and love, the more pain we suffer. This is true in all relationships, whether of close friends, among colleagues and particularly in marriage. Once betrayal is discovered, it is extremely difficult to repair the relationship, for trust has been broken. Without trust, no relationship can ever blossom, since no communication is possible. The intimacy of love is dependent solely on trust. A relationship cannot thrive as there is no fertile ground to germinate the seed of love when one lives in constant suspicion of the other party. That is why, although we know from experience that setbacks, disappointments, frustrations in relationships happen in life, we must still choose to trust again, otherwise we are doomed to loneliness.

Go HERE to read the entire article.

The Bible kept me sane - Catherine Doherty

Catherine Doherty in 1941

I have referred to Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985), the foundress of Madonna House in Combermere, Canada, a number of times on this blog. She is among those whose causes for “official” sainthood are being worked on at the moment in Rome. 

Go HERE to find out more about her, or HERE to the Madonna House website. 

I was moved by the following short reflection of hers, which I think is particularly important early in Holy Week. More than at any other time of the year, this is when the Church's liturgy absolutely drenches us (especially those who are able to come to everything!) in life-giving Scripture. And that's a very good thing. We hear large slabs of the Bible read; we hear sermons on specific texts; we hear it sung and chanted hauntingly in all the special services as a backdrop to the spiritual journey of these days. This Holy Week let's allow the Scriptures - the Bible - to expand our spiritual horizons, to strengthen us in our suffering and grief, to encourage us in our struggles, and to increase our thanksgiving to Father God for his goodness. Catherine Doherty says:

   

I have been exposed to the Gospel (I should say the Bible) since childhood. My Father used to gather everybody together and read aloud the lesson of the day according to the Eastern Rite. 

Mother and all the servants would also gather to listen to the Holy Words. So the habit of referring to the Bible, but mostly to the Gospel, has been with me since childhood and has stayed with me until old age.

As I read more of the Holy Book with its incredible wealth, I realized more and more my own poverty. When, after the Russian Revolution, I was thrown on the shores of America, or I should say the new continent, the Bible was the only consolation that I had in various "brown rooms." 

I call them "brown rooms," those shabby boarding house rooms that I had to live in for quite a while. What else could I read at 111 Wabash Avenue in Chicago when all around me people were fornicating? What else could I read in the depths of the sorrows and pain into which the Lord plunged me? 

Yes, the Bible was a companion, a strange and unusual companion. I wonder if many people understand what it means. 

It is like a door opening. You can walk right into it, close it, and be in the midst of God’s heart. 

The Bible speaks of the New Covenant of love. When you are down and out and haven’t a friend in the world; when you stand on a corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in New York looking at people longingly, hoping that somebody would say "hello" to you—at times like these the Bible is your friend.

You go back to that brown room and what do you see? You see a door, you see a poustinia (a room of solitude and prayer). You go in, you lock the door, and the world is yours. 

Truly the Kingdom of God is yours. That Book really keeps you sane. It can make you holy, if you let it. Yes, it’s a strange book, the Bible. 

But I always read the Gospel first. The Gospel was like a voice, God speaking to me and I speaking to God, in all the brown rooms of the world that I had to live in. Yes, it was beautiful. But so lonely. 

You know something? This Book protects you. At least it protected me from the waters that you can see from Brooklyn Bridge. They were so enticing. 

And a page of that Book floated, it seemed, down before my eyes. And a voice spoke, and I left the bridge. If it hadn’t been for that Book, I don’t think I would have left the bridge or many other dangerous places, where near despair would have dragged me into suicide like the undertow of the sea. 

There is something about the words of that holy Book that are melodious and poetic. But, as I said, I am a poor woman. 

 —Adapted from The Gospel of a Poor Woman, (1992), pp. 9-10, Madonna House Publications, out of print.

Holy Week begins: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN!

Father Alexander Tefft is the priest at the Antiochian Orthodox Parish of Saint Botolph, London, U.K., as well as Chaplain and Tutor at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Cambridge. Here is the sermon he preached for Palm Sunday 2010. 

Like the children with the palms of victory, we cry out to Thee, O Vanquisher of Death … (Troparion of the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem) 

We are at war: so choose your sides, now! No one is neutral. No one stands idly by and says: This war has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with you! Do you know what is at stake? Your home, your freedom. Your family and all your loved ones. All that you have, or ever had, or ever will have. Everything you treasure is at stake. The enemy is everywhere, there is nowhere to hide. Wherever you flee, you run straight into his line of fire. His bombs are planted where you least expect; his landmines, wherever you set your foot. His gun is pointed at your gut. This enemy wants more than victory. He wants to watch you whimper, to see you crawl on all fours and plead for your life. He prolongs your agony until you curse the hour you were born. You can never buy him off – you can never frighten him away. Try to negotiate with him: you will only hand over the ones that you love, straight into his hands. The only question is: Will you collaborate? Or will you resist? In this fight, there are no neutrals: whoever is not with us, is against us. So form ranks, now! The oldest war you have ever fought, you are engaged in; the oldest enemy you have ever known is at your throat. You have been fighting this enemy from the hour that you were conceived in the womb. 

The enemy … is death. 

How can you recognise him? A masked figure in a black cape, lined with scarlet? Death is subtler than that. He creeps up behind, like an assassin. He infiltrates all your lines of defence. He stirs up a panic. He strikes and retreats, wears you down until you lose the strength to resist. Worst of all, he places his allies all around you. Biologists, professors of the public understanding of science tell you: ‘Death is natural. Your heart stops, that’s is it’. Professional atheists, sipping port in the members’ common room, saying: ‘When you die, you decay. No harps, no angels, no nothing. So stop bothering our high society with your fairy tales about life after death’. So-called bishops in stiff clerical collars join in and tell you: ‘Jesus never rose again in his body. His Resurrection means that his moral teachings live on forever’. The allies and accomplices of death never need to form ranks at all. Young atheists are too full of themselves to think about death; old atheists are too full of irony to notice, they are dead already. But make no mistake. Whoever denies the Resurrection is the accomplice of death: above all, if he (or she?) wears a clerical collar.

He collaborates: he negotiates to hand over your loved ones to the enemy. He holds the door open to death and says: ‘Come on in!’ ‘Sell all the candles, the robes and the ritual ointment’, the atheist shouts. ‘Give it to the poor!’ That is what Christianity is about, not fairy tales about rising from the dead. 

But, if you have ever watched a loved one die, you know death isn’t natural. Death does not begin when your heart stops. Death begins as soon as you give him the victory. The enemy, the obscene, unnatural monster, yawns in front of you. He opens the black pit of his throat, until you give him the last word. Today, we deny him the last word. 

This day, Palm Sunday, we declare war on death. Death in all his forms. Your baby, too weak to move in his incubator. Your husband or wife, your father or mother, wasting and confused: a mind demented, a body darkened with sores, slipping like sand out of your hands. A child left to bleed in the street. The black pit of death opens up before us – and Christ, the enemy of death, stands at the pit and calls inside. His voice echoes in the pit, in the dark. Yesterday, he stood at the mouth of the cave and called out: ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ Now, his friend Lazarus sits at table with him. Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anoints his feet with the most costly ointment. Already, the accomplices of death complain: ‘Sell the ointment, give it to the poor’. But the ointment is for more than anointing the dead. It is the oil of a wrestler, preparing for combat. ‘Kill Lazarus!’ cry the accomplices of death. On account of him, the crowds begin to see why Jesus has come. This is no carpenter’s son, teaching morals on a mountain top. This is the final Vanquisher of Death. He does not ride into Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. He rides out into the field of battle. This is the final showdown. This is the conquest of death. 

The crowds that surround him throw branches of palm trees on his path. They shout out ‘Hosanna to the Liberator! Hosanna to the King of Israel!’ They await his final showdown – but they mistake the enemy. This is no freedom fighter, seated on horseback to meet the Romans face to face. He wears no armour, no helmet or breastplate. He rides on to victory; but it is no ordinary victory, in no ordinary war. If the enemy is everywhere, so is he; if the enemy is ruthless, he is more ruthless; if the enemy prolongs your anguish, he absorbs that anguish into himself. This day, he rides right into the line of fire. Yesterday, he stood at the mouth of the cave and called Lazarus forth; in five days, he will ride into mouth of hell. He will plunge into the throat of death. He will stand firm, like the stubborn colt of a donkey that he rides into Jerusalem today. He will stand his ground – and the fire of his divine being will burn out the enemy from inside. Death will groan in agony: ‘What was this flesh I swallowed up? A mangled, tortured body, a body abandoned by his friends: I swallowed it, and met God face to face! I took what I saw and crumbled at what I could not see. Now, I surrender all the dead’. This Sunday, death opens its throat to swallow us live – and Christ rides in, on an ass’s colt. By the eve of Friday, he will cut death open from inside. On Saturday, he will burn out the chambers of hell. On Sunday, death will vomit him out; and, with him, all the dead will arise. 

Brothers and Sisters in Christ: this is not a piece of folk art in my hand. It is a weapon. A token of the worst that death can do. Two bars of wood, hoisted up from the ground in a desolate place. A victim, stripped naked, his hands and feet nailed into the wood; then, exposed to sun and wind, flies and birds – left to die a slow, obscene death. But every death is obscene. Every death is an insult to a creature made in the image of God. But see! This cross is not made of wood. It is woven from palm branches, strewn on the streets of the Holy City. Branches, trampled under the foot of a donkey; just as the One who rides on that donkey, will trample down death by death. Everyone here who has lost someone he or she loved; everyone here, whom death has robbed: let him go forth into the battle this day. This is the final showdown. Christ enters the Holy City, on his way to win back your loved ones. He rides down the throat of the monster. This day, carrying palms of victory, we cry out ‘Hosanna!’ to the Vanquisher of Death.

Palm Sunday High Mass, All Saints' Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, 2003