Chris
McDonnell, UK
chris@mcdonnell83.freeserve.co.uk
Previous articles by Chris Comments
welcome here
April
12, 2017
My
friend Lazarus is only asleep
In
New
College
,
Oxford
, there is a piece by the sculptor Jacob Epstein
depicting Lazarus, a cloth-bound figure with the head turned looking back
over his shoulder. It is a striking image of an event that the recent
Gospel Reading for Passion Sunday so vividly described.
We
have reached the end of Lent for another year, the Triduum is upon us, the
story of the Passover is being re-told and soon will come the majesty and
joy of Easter morning and Resurrection.
It was that event that
John pre-figured in the story of Lazarus, the friend who had died. At each
stage the challenge offered demanded faith, a clarity of trust that we all
find so hard to match. Yet, there it is, starkly told.
In the Stations of the
Cross, ‘Walk with me’,
published in the mid-Nineties by McCrimmons, the 15th station ‘Resurrection’
has these words.
‘Morning,
and first light in the garden brings shadows of women moving. Turning they
did not recognise in this Springtime Pasch, the Nazarene passing over into
Galilee
. Contained in
the finger-space of the morning dawn the Resurrected Christ greets us.’
There
is something special about the early morning, those brief hours after the
first shadows of dawn begin to lift the darkness of the night. As the sky
lightens, the turning earth begins to greet the rising sun and the
brilliant new light of day engulfs the land. Whether in the country where
fields are still damp with dew, open and wide to the distance or in cities
where light breaks along stirring streets or illuminates narrow passage
ways, the effect is the same. A new day is born.
When Teilhard de
Chardin was working in
China
in the mid 20s, he wrote the beautiful meditation, ‘The Mass on the World’. In it he speaks of his prayer without ‘neither
bread, nor wine, nor altar’. His description of the desert dawn is
quite beautiful. ‘Over there, on the horizon the sun has just touched with light the
outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again beneath this moving sheet
of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once
again begins its fearful travail’. That is a stunning description of
a dawn that every moment is occurring somewhere over our earth as we turn
to face each new day.
As the women left the
city to attend to the necessary Rites on the body of Jesus, they must have
walked with a heavy heart, in spite of the sunrise, memories of the Friday
afternoon still raw. That heaviness of heart was to become shock and
amazement when they met with the Risen Christ and two words were
exchanged, ‘Mary’ and ‘Rabboni’.
Just as there is
continuity with the rotation of our planet, indeed we would be in a sorry
state were it not so, so there is continued wonderment at Resurrection and
the story of our Christian faith that flows from it.
It is a Resurrected Christ that is the basis of our belief and it is
at the core of our 21st Century community that we call Church.
We are battered and bruised by so much in these turbulent years as we seek
solutions to the real problems that face us. The challenge to Christians
posed by a society that in numerous ways contradicts the Gospel is real.
Raw greed and a selfish political climate challenge the very core
of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Simplicity is a word that has been
lost in the undergrowth.
So the Easter People
have a task ahead and it has to be accomplished within itself as well as
looking to its Mission of Witness beyond. We have to be honest with
ourselves if we are to be credible to others.
The gift of the Spirit
to us in the person of Francis, Bishop of Rome, has been providential.
Whether or not the various gatherings both in the
Vatican
and beyond realise it is sometimes an open question.
The Lazarus figure
depicted by Epstein is looking over his shoulder, yet the future is before
him. Jesus instructs those who witness this event to ‘Let
him go free’. So they take away the binding cloths that enfold him
and do indeed give Lazarus his freedom.
That is the essence of
the Resurrection that again we celebrate this Easter. We live in this
freedom and have a responsibility to share it with others, just as the
good Lord has shared it with us. The final part of the text for the
Station of Resurrection concludes with these words.
‘Rabboni,
we did not trust you, we did not understand. We thought it was over.
“No, my people, it has just begun”’
END
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