Embracing the Paschal Mystery

Most people enjoy a good mystery.  Thousands of movies, novels, and TV programs succeed on the basis of keeping people engaged in the question of whodunit, laced with hints, motives, surprises, and finally an exciting conclusion.  This week in our liturgical calendar is all about the greatest Mystery of all time, the Paschal Mystery.  The Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection is a Mystery with a capital “M” in the sense that we cannot fully comprehend why God would put Himself through all this, just for us.  Although we already know the outcome, the Mystery of why He would suffer, die, and rise from the dead baffles us.  It would have been so much easier for Him to accomplish our salvation with a mere wave of His hand, or word of mercy and forgiveness.  The human mind and body is repelled by the notion of suffering and death, and yet, the crucifixion of Jesus is the very symbol of our faith.  Why He would do this, escapes our understanding precisely because we are human and cannot know the mind of God.  

We attempt to understand and explain His actions but simply cannot.   This is a Mystery we will never solve, but are called to embrace and accept.   If we are willing to embrace it, this Mystery can empower and enliven us in ways we would never have thought possible.  This is because the Paschal Mystery is at its’ heart, the Mystery of Love, love so powerful that it conquers everything… everything, including suffering and even death.   Of our own accord we may be able to forestall or mitigate suffering, but we have no power over death.  Eventually, each and every one of us will succumb to death.  During our earthly lives, we struggle with brokenness caused by our own sinful mistakes.  Despite our greed, lust, and selfishness, and all the ill-effects they cause, Our Lord renders thees shortcomings powerless to destroy us.  All of our sinful mistakes are washed away in the blood of the cross which not only overcomes the effects of sin, it conquers even death itself. 

In a wonderful homily last year, one of our Fort Myers priests made this point poignantly when he said,

“If we accept the Paschal Mystery as the template for our lives, and allow the power of the resurrection to infuse every part of us:

. . . our failures will not crush our spirit.

. . . our sorrows will not break our heart forever.

. . . our disappointments will not sap our strength.

. . . our unfulfilled dreams will not extinguish our hope.

. . . our sin will not scar us forever.

. . . and even our illness and death will give way to a life that has no end.”

                                                                           (Fr. Bernie Dang -2013 Easter homily) 

This is the power of the incredible Paschal Mystery, a power unleashed on the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  This is why we celebrate Easter.  Sadness and disappointment do not win.  Hatred and anger do not win.  Not even death wins!   God wins!   Every time!

With this firmly in mind, what is it we must rise from?  Whatever is keeping us down, whatever is crushing our spirit, will not and cannot win.  These may be our Good Friday moments of suffering and pain, but we know in our hearts that this is not the end of our story, we will rise from this, better days are ahead.  This is why we celebrate.   This is the Good News of the Resurrection.   This is what comforts us during our trials and pain.  This is what inspires and transforms us, so that we too may learn to love as God loves: sacrificially, unhesitatingly, and unconditionally.  Perhaps this is why God brought about our salvation the way He did: He not only forgives and saves us, He gives us hope and inspiration.  If we enter fully into the Paschal Mystery, we will be changed forever, and in doing so we too can help change the world.

 

Quantum Physics and The Resurrection

Sunday’s scripture speaks to the deepest question about our existence.   Does life end at death, or will we continue to live for all eternity?   While Jesus says repeatedly that sin brings death, in today’s gospel He makes it abundantly clear that we will enjoy eternal life if we believe in Him:

 “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,
and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die."  (John 11: 25)

Our faith tells us that each of us is a unique soul enfleshed in a human body.   St. Paul makes this very clear in today’s epistle:

“If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.”  (Romans 8:11)

Every human life is sacred because the Spirit of God dwells in us from the moment of conception.  Miraculously, we grow from a few cells to a complete human being in a matter of weeks because God Himself created us this way.  This is no accident of nature and neither is our intellect, our emotional being, nor our capacity to love one another.  When we observe nature, we stand in awe precisely because it demonstrates the beauty, power and majesty of our creator.  Classical art imitates nature out of respect for the grandeur of creation, but modern art seems to work at distorting beauty, mocking nature, and in too many cases, deriding God Himself, as if asserting our human will is somehow art when it is shocking, crude, or just plain stupid.

Nature reveals a great deal about the intelligent design of the universe, including human life and our destiny.  The seasons of the year, each with their own beauty, reveal the process of birth, growth, death and rebirth.  On a grand scale, the universe itself might even reveal something about the destiny of every human being.  We live our mortal lives, measured by the passage of time, and we know that our bodies will eventually die and return to the dust of the earth.  However, Jesus promises us that He is the Resurrection and the Life and that we will live with Him and Our Father for all eternity, if we possess the Spirit of Christ.  How can this be so, if our mortal bodies decompose in the earth?  But there is more to us than just mortal bodies, we are also spirit and soul. 

We know that all things are possible for God, and the universe provides examples of amazing things we can hardly comprehend.  For example, physicists agree that the universe came into existence in a spectacular event commonly referred to as the big bang.  Prior to this, all matter and energy either did not exist, or existed in the form of a singularity, compressed into an infinitely tiny object in which the laws of physics as we know them did not apply.   More recently we’ve come to understand that black holes exist throughout the universe as the result of exploding stars in which their entire mass has then been compressed into an infinitely tiny object.  At the center of these black holes are what is called a gravitational singularity, in which the curvature of spacetime is infinite.  This means that the path of anything that comes near a black hole curves to enter into it, and the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape.  Oddly, even time curves and slows down infinitely as it passes the point of no return.  This point of no return is referred to as the event horizon.   In a sense, human death is like an event horizon.  As we pass through it, we are attracted inexorably to God who is the ultimate singularity.  The laws of physics no longer apply, there is no more time, no laws of physics, only God Himself, to whom everything that exists owes its existence and to whom everyone returns.  The only way we can go there is through death when our soul and spirit are liberated from our earthly body and we are filled with the Spirit of Christ.   This is of course, a great mystery.  Perhaps the structure and substance of the universe is merely a reflection of the nature of God and all thing, including our human spirit, are attracted back to God who is the source and summit of all existence.  

God is indeed the source of all matter and energy, and the big bang was His way of creating the universe and everything in it.   He ordered existence out of nothing, or chaos if you like, so that ultimately, human beings of His creation would come into existence with both bodies and souls.  God had no need to do this, but did so purely out of love.  He has revealed Himself in scripture and in the life of Jesus, who not only explained our destiny, but prefigured it by being the first to rise from the dead, just as He promised.

The universe is still a great mystery, but our faith has no reason to fear or refute the truths of nature.  This is because the more we learn about the physical universe, the more we learn about God’s omnipotence.