Why is this night different?

Easter Vigil

As Christians celebrate Easter, our Christian Passover, Jews throughout the world also commemorate this holy night with the seder or Passover Meal. A crucial and integral part of the Jewish ritual is what is called “the Four Questions”. Now, that’s actually a misnomer because the truth is that, it is just ONE question with four answers. The central question is posed by the youngest person in the room, “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” The Exultet (or the Easter Proclamation), sung at the beginning of this Vigil, provides us with the answer. Why is this night so different? Why is this night so special? “This is the night that with a pillar of fire, (God) banished the darkness of sin,” “This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious of the underworld,” “This is the night of which it is written: ‘The night shall be bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness’” and “O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of Earth, the divine to the human.”

At the heart of this proclamation is this invitation to praise the invisible God and our Lord Jesus Christ for His work of redemption: “for our sake paid Adam’s debt to the eternal Father.” This is done by using biblical device of type and antitype. From the perspective of scriptures, a type was a model or symbol of something or someone that would exist at a future time. The later person or thing was called the antitype. For example, Moses is a type of Jesus, who is the antitype. The first three proclamations refer to the three types of night in the story of the Exodus: the night of the Passover in Egypt; the night of the passage through the Red Sea, and the night of the journey through the desert, which was illuminated by the pillar of fire.

But, the focus of this great song is certainly not on the story of Israel’s delivery from Egypt. These stories and the images they paint only serve as a prefiguration of what is to come. The delivery from slavery in Egypt is a type of delivery from the eternal death of sin, pointing to the antitype which is anticipated in the New Testament. First, the Old Passover points to the new Passover, where Christ passed from death to life (or as the song proclaims “this is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld”). As God in the story of the Exodus accepted the death of an innocent lamb in place of the death of the Israelites - they were saved vicariously, as we are by the death of Christ. The blood of this lamb marked out the Israelites as the object of God's special choice and love; and this is just what the blood of Christ does for the souls of the redeemed. That lamb, having been sacrificed, was eaten by the family; the true Lamb of God is shared with God's family in the Mass.

Secondly, the crossing of the Red Sea points to baptism and its effects: “The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty!” The waters of Baptism are also death-bringing and life-giving; they bring death to the ‘old man’, the Adam-man, but life to the ‘new man’, the Christ-man or Christian. “In our Baptism”, wrote St. Paul, “we have been buried with Christ, died like him, that so, just as Christ was raised up by his Father's power from the dead, we too might live and move in a new kind of existence”.

And finally, the journey through the desert illuminated by the pillar of fire points to the Paschal Candle described as a “pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honour … to overcome the darkness of this night.” Just as the ancient fiery pillar led the men of old through the darkness of the desert to the waters of the Red Sea, so now the fiery pillar of the paschal candle leads the men of today through the darkness of the church to the waters of Baptism.  After the waters, the fiery pillar led God's Chosen People of the Old Testament in their march through the desert towards the Promised Land. In like manner, after Baptism he who is symbolised by the fiery pillar of the candle leads God's Chosen People, the Church, in their journey through this life towards the promised land of heaven. As you can already guess, the Paschal Candle is the symbol of Christ Himself, the Light of the World. That is why the Paschal Candle is treated as if it were a person. It is welcomed by the congregation at the church door; it is given the honours proper to a person of importance. It is introduced as “Lumen Christi” (the Light of Christ. Majestically it is borne ahead, hero of the occasion, shining focal point of every gaze, the sole light-giver - as was Christ whom it personifies.

In a way, our liturgy seems to imitate life. The looming darkness which enshrouds this night always threatens to overwhelm the dimming light emanating from our candles but with the first notes of the magnificent Easter Proclamation being sung, the darkness is dramatically dispelled by the lights which are turned on in the Church, as the darkness of sin is expelled by the Light of Christ. The forces of chaos that threatens to destroy our universe are subdued by the power and authority of God, and subverted into becoming the very raw material of both the old creation as well as the new one. God re-creates and redeems all life from dead and dry bones. We are released from the bonds of self-obsession, addiction and whatever that would steal away the radical freedom God has given us. From the waters of destruction, emerges new life. On this night, death itself is trampled upon.

We know only too well those situations where darkness covers our lives. Our present struggles, our addiction to sin, the scandals that have rocked the Church, the weight of world events and even the crisis we are experiencing in our communities, our families and our own personal lives, all obscure our hope. But the hope of the risen Christ can transform our darkness to light. This is what we celebrate tonight. So, why is this night different from all other nights? Here you have the answer: “This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.”

Yes, this is the night when Christ, the Life arose from the dead. The seal of the grave is broken and the morning of the new creation breaks forth out of the night. This is the night when the Lord leads Adam and Eve, you and you and all of you out of the blackness of the tomb and into the brilliance of the 8th day sun. This is the night when we receive more from Jesus than what we lost in Adam; when we are clothed in the skin of the Lamb of God; when death’s dread angel sheathes his sword to beckon us with open arms back into the Garden of Heaven. “Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.” This is the night where the wonder of the resurrection is upon us once more. Christ is risen, death is vanquished, humanity is restored to their rightful place with God. Yes, “this is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness.”

At the Cross, her station keeping

Good Friday

“Stabat mater dolorosa juxta Crucem lacrimosa dum pendebat Filius”  “At the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to her Son to the last.” One of the best loved hymns that dates from the 13^th century, sung between the Stations of the Cross, situates our Lady at the scene of her Beloved Son’s crucifixion. The hymn reminds us that Mary is here with us this Good Friday as she was on that first.

St John paints this poignant picture of Our Lord, reigning supremely from His cross, His dignity undiminished, and now as King, issues His last decree from His regal throne. According to the Fourth Gospel, there are five people at the foot of the cross, of whom the most prominent are His mother and the beloved disciple, two figures whose names are never given. These two people are historical figures but it is clear that St John is interested in them for symbolic and theological reasons. Before He dies, our Lord commits His beloved disciple to His Mother’s care and His Mother to that disciple’s care in perpetuity. “Behold your son!” “Behold your Mother!” These words do not just merely reflect Jesus’ filial concern for the mother. These words have a profound theological value. At the cross, at the very moment of His death, Our Lord gives birth to the Church. His own Mother and the Beloved Disciple would be the first born. But there is more, at the cross, the Mother of Christ becomes our mother!

It is our Mother who invites us to join her in gazing upon the shimmering vision of a bejewelled tree, a tree not of death, but of life, indeed the true Tree of Life. To the untrained eye, here is a twisted and ugly structure. But Mary teaches us that when we look through the double lenses of love and faith, the cross is indeed wondrous, and beautiful. This is why at every Good Friday service, during the Adoration of the Holy Cross, the priest will intone this ancient chant, “Ecce lignum Crucis, in quo salus mundi pependit” “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world,” to which all of you are invited to respond, “Venite, adoremus,” “Come let us adore.” What a strange invitation and a stranger response. To a non-Christian stranger, this borders on superstitious idolatry – the worship of a piece of wood, what more, an instrument of torture and execution. Secular bafflement with the wondrous cross surely springs above all from an inability to believe that suffering can co-exist with human dignity. Society believes that pain and powerlessness dehumanises us. But the gospel says something different. It tells us uncompromisingly that it is at the moment in which our Lord is weakest, humiliated and beaten, that His strength, glory and victory is most apparent. 

Yes, the cross has been the cause of incomprehension, even embarrassment, in any age, and not least in ours.  Our contemporaries often criticise us for what seems to be the unhealthy Christian attitude to suffering. Are we not moralistic killjoys at best, masochists (or worse) at worst? And by placing an instrument of torture at the centre of our religion and even glamorising pain and inviting us to “adore” and “worship” it, does not the Church merit such accusations? Of course, our answer is ‘No’: otherwise we would not be here today. But we need to hear the questions unflinchingly, because, underlying them all, I think, there are deeper questions about human suffering, questions to which only the Cross can provide an answer.

Many of us have doubtless been rendered speechless when others have asked us, how we can believe in God when there is so much suffering in the world. Perhaps, confronted with our own affliction or that of those we love, we have posed the same question ourselves, and been similarly reduced to silence.  All the neat and tidy answers are ultimately unsatisfying. But when our explanations come up short, when our assurances seem empty and hollow, we can only point in the direction of the Cross and find the answer. We dare not imagine Mary’s state of mind as she gazed on the ruined face of her Son on that terrible first Good Friday. The grief of any mother watching their child suffer is truly terrible.  Yet, she with perfect love must have suffered all the more.  The Church Fathers teach in fact, that Mary’s sufferings were so great that all the suffering of all the martyrs together do not compare to her suffering with Christ.

But our Lady should not suffer alone. She does not suffer alone. The hymn Stabat Mater invites us to share in her suffering. We are to contemplate with her the sufferings of Christ, recognising God’s great love for us in His willingness to bear the sins of the world, our sins. And not just to meditate upon Christ’s crucifixion, but we, like Mary and with Mary are called, to share in His suffering, to bear the cross with Him.  In this way, our earthly sorrows can be transformed into acts of love. God allows this union of Mary’s sorrows and ours with Christ’s redemptive suffering for the conversion of sinners.  Suffering is the result of sin, yet, on the cross Our Lord transforms suffering into the remedy for sin. So too is sorrow transformed.  Even the greatest calamity, either private or public, can become an opportunity for drawing nearer to God and obtaining grace for sinners.

But it is not only us who must unite our suffering to that of Mary’s and through Mary, with that of Christ. Actually, it is quite the reverse. Christ, in His Incarnation, unites with us not only in sharing our human nature but also in our most human of experiences, suffering and death. His sufferings are our sufferings, and also, extraordinarily, ours are His: part of the suffering that redeemed the world. And so we can be assured that if our own pain is taken up into the pain of Jesus, even when it seems to humiliate and defeat us, we can still be assured that we have the dignity as sons and daughters of God, cooperating with Christ for the salvation of the world He loves.  St Augustine describes our Lord as performing “the most wonderful exchange” with us. “Through us (by accepting our human nature), he died; through him (his gift of divine life), we shall live.” And then the great doctor adds, “The death of the Lord our God should not be a cause of shame for us; rather, it should be our greatest hope, our greatest glory. In taking upon himself the death that he found in us, he has most faithfully promised to give us life in Him, such as we cannot have of ourselves.”

Of course, our celebration cannot just merely end today. If you have chosen to come to Church to commemorate His passion today, good for you. But it would clearly be an injustice if you do not stay around for the real ending, and it did not end with His death. If the story of Jesus had ended on Good Friday, it would be profoundly perverse to claim that there was anything beautiful, anything wondrous about the Cross. But we know that today is not the end of the story. We know that it is God Himself who hangs there, who has stepped down into our world with all its sorrows, not in order to glorify our affliction, but in order to lift us with Him into the bliss of heaven.

Today, we share the pain of our Mother, remembering the words of Stabat Mater, “at the Cross her station keeping, stood the mournful Mother weeping, close to her Son to the last”  but tomorrow, we will welcome the new dawn after the long dark night of despair with another song, the Exultet: “Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven, exult, let Angel ministers of God exult … let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness.” And why should we change our tune? We know the answer, the true end of the story.  The victory is accomplished, the heavenly powers around God’s throne exult even as the Lord sleeps in death, because when He wakes, the members of His body will wake with Him into the springtime loveliness of the resurrection. 

There will be no Mass without the Priesthood

Maundy Thursday

Most people would focus on the foot-washing ritual when thinking about today’s mass. Few realise that the foot washing rite is actually optional and is not a central component. Rather, the rubrics clearly spell out the focus of the homily: we are called to shed light “on the principal mysteries that are commemorated in this Mass, namely, the institution of the Holy Eucharist and of the priestly Order, and the commandment of the Lord concerning fraternal charity.” Most people would have certainly heard about the Eucharist, but how about the priesthood? 

I would like to begin by being honest here. It’s been a bad year for the Church. But the truth is: it’s been a bad year for Catholic priests. If our Church has been getting a bad rap this past year, the clergy is to be blamed, no doubt about it. Our Holy Father identifies the problem as the sin of clericalism and describes it in this manner: “Clerics feel they are superior, they are far from the people; they have no time to hear the poor, the suffering, prisoners, the sick.” Clericalism is the cause why priests live a double life and why sometimes they band together to cover up their faults. But there is much more to be said about the problem. The issue just isn’t about our attitude, it has to do with sin. The problem of clergy abuse clearly stems from a sinful lifestyle, from immoral behaviour that is incompatible with the priestly life, with the Christian life.

But despite the clergy abuse scandal and sin of clericalism, the Church continues to celebrate today, the institution of not just one sacrament but two. It’s not coincidental that the priesthood and Eucharist are established simultaneously. And this is why today, we commemorate the institution of both sacraments – the priesthood and the Eucharist. Both are intertwined, one cannot exist without the other. Without the priesthood, there would not only be no Sacrifice of the Mass; there would be no Catholic Church. This may sound strange, even audacious. But the truth is that God became man in order to sacrifice Himself on the Cross by dying for the salvation of the world. Having died once on Calvary, He continues offering Himself in every Mass so totally that that sacrifice is made present once again every time that Mass is offered, even until the end of time.

So, what makes the Mass possible? On the one hand, the Mass is possible only because Christ’s death on Calvary is literally repeated in every Mass. But the Mass is only possible if you have a priest because only the priest can offer the bloodless sacrifice of the Mass, for he not only stands in the person of Christ, but is wholly configured to Him; he is another Christ, Alter Christus. Though I may risk sounding arrogant, the truth is that there can be no Mass without the priesthood. That is why Christ instituted the Sacrament of the priesthood, to ensure that His sacrifice on Calvary would be renewed and repeated in every Mass until the end of time.

It is obvious that we can associate the Eucharist with the Last Supper, but how about the Priesthood? We can see this in the action of our Lord washing the feet of His disciples. Most people would easily recognise this as an example of Christ’s humility. This is true but there is more to it.  This action of washing appears to be a deliberate echo of the washing of the hands and feet done by the sacrificial priests of the Old Covenant. 

The washing was not just a practical and hygienic preparation for offering sacrifices at the altar of the Temple, but this washing symbolised the priest’s unworthiness to approach the Lord, so it’s fitting that the washing of feet occurs at the same time that the Apostles are entrusted with the Eucharist (they too are unworthy men).  But notice what’s different: the Old Covenant focused on self-purification. Priests performed ablutions to purify themselves. But the New Covenant is focused on sanctifying others.  We unworthy priests are washed, we are purified, in order that we may now purify, wash, and sanctify others. In fact, some commentators see in the term “bath” (used by the Lord) as an echo of Baptism (which can only be administered once) and subsequent “washings” to the sacrament of Penance.

Having established all of this, consider Christ’s dual commission. Both commissions find its source in these theologically powerful words of our Lord: “Do this in memory of Me.” The key words which solemnise the institution by Christ of the ministerial priesthood in its eternal relation to the Eucharist. Immediately after instituting the Eucharist, the Lord in other scriptural texts orders the Apostles: “do this in memory of me” (Lk. 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24).  That doesn’t mean “treat this as a symbol.” The memorial offering of Christ’s Body and Blood actually is, Christ’s Body and Blood, it is making present His Death on Calvary.

But there is a second commission which is found only here in the Gospel of St John. It comes at the end of the washing of the feet. When he had washed their feet, the Lord said to them, “Do you understand … what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.” One may paraphrase this by using the same words of Christ, “do this in memory of Me.” This is the mandate (mandatum) that gives Maundy Thursday its name. 

So, the first commission recorded by St Luke and St Paul, “do this in memory of me,” refers to the Eucharist. But this second commission, refers to the priesthood. Most Christians read the washing of feet as simply a nice gesture, a sign of humble service to others. But Christ makes it clear that it’s so much more. It is about the sacrificial priesthood, about the priestly ministry of offering not only the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but also forgiveness of sins in the sacraments of Baptism and Penance. And our Lord’s second commission is therefore a mandate to the Church to pass on the gift of the priesthood, without which, there would be no Eucharist, there would be no forgiveness of sins, there would be no Church.

In this day and age, there is so much pressure from people for priests to adopt their way of acting, their attitudes and habits, their agitated lives and occupations. But is this what is really needed?  Pity the poor priest, forced to prove his worth and justify his existence by his affability or other skills, rather than by his priesthood in offering the Sacrifice of the Mass, which is seen as innately worthless in an unbelieving world. Sometimes, I feel that so many of us priests often attempt to conform ourselves to these standards that we forget this one simple truth: the priest exists for one main purpose: to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass. When we forget this, then the cultic nature of the priesthood is diminished at the expense of making him a better manager or a better public speaker. Better managers and better speakers we have aplenty. But only a priest can do what a priest does best – offer the sacrifice of the Mass faithfully and diligently.

So tonight, I ask you to pray for your priests. Pray for us because we are sinners and not saints. If we were saints you would be praying "to" us. We priests are indeed weak, sinful men, men who have failed Christ, our vocation and our flock many times and sometimes in the most scandalous ways. The first "priests", the Apostles, were no different - one betrayed our Lord, another denied Him, and and others fled like cowards. Our ordination may have configured us to the person of Jesus Christ, but it is certainly not a canonisation. The light of Christ has shown in our hearts but as St Paul puts it, “we hold this treasure in pots of earthenware, so that the immensity of power is God’s and not our own.” We priests alone can offer the sacrifice of the Mass but we can take no credit for it. It is the audacity of God’s generosity who chose to make weak unworthy men like us His ministers.   Never cease praying for us because your prayers encourage and support us in times of trial or discouragement, so that there will be good and holy men called to priesthood to ensure that you should always have the Eucharist and the forgiveness for your sins.