DIOCESE OF SYDNEY REPORT:
Homily - Easter Vigil of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 7 April 2012
Crisis in the Kingdom of God (A three-part Homily for the Triduum)
Part Three: Crisis of Love for All Humanity
Easter Vigil of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 7 April 2012
Download an audio version of this homily
Listen to this homily at Bishop Anthony's iTunes Podcasts
It’s the greatest story ever told: the story of God and man. It is above all a love story. God, as St Catherine of Siena put it, was pazzo d’amore, insane with love for us, from all eternity, even before we were made. Our First Reading tonight (Gen 1:1-2:2) recalls how He made us, in His own image, male and female, made for marriage, for fruitfulness and dominion, with Godlike reason, freedom, creativity and passion. He also made this universe for our sakes, for us to live and learn in, play and delight in, a universe in which to be lovers and beloved, God’s darlings. This same divine obsession holds us in being every moment of our existence. When we ourselves love, our hearts and minds expand, our communion with God deepens, our friendships grow warmer, the world is a better place. There is something divine in every act of love, in vows of marriage or religion, in acts of friendship, in kindness to colleagues and strangers, the poor and even enemies.
It’s the greatest love-story ever told – and yet also a story of broken hearts. The crisis in the Kingdom of God, a crisis of all humanity, is that we turned against the very love that creates and sustains us. This fall from grace, this ‘Original Sin’, has been a recurrent pattern ever since, so that there’s nothing original about it anymore. Pride, envy, lust, selfishness and grudges have dogged our history. Almost from the beginning the greatest romance was the greatest tragedy as well.
As human beings fell from grace they experienced a breakdown of relations with themselves, each other, creation and God. If anything this crisis of love is magnified today. In our culture, self-regard easily becomes self-obsession, self-serving and, when that fails, self-loathing. Loyalty is seen as weakness, other people as rivals. Alliances of convenience allow us to use each other’s bodies, minds and hearts, for pleasure or profit, without commitment. Our love for creation can be equally ambiguous. And there is much in contemporary culture that would dismiss our love of God altogether, reducing it to childish fantasy, ancient superstition, constraints imposed by a corrupt institution.
In this crisis of love we are both victims and perpetrators. Each of us has at some time hurt and been hurt. Each has loved not as well as we should and been loved not as well as we would. If we love well, we are at our most human and divine; but it costs, as God ‘learnt’ these three days past, when love cost Him His Son’s life.
The greatest love-story ever told is also the greatest tragedy: the story of God from the dawn of time, steadily holding out the hand of friendship, and of humanity muddling its way through, loving generously at times, middling well at others, not at all at others. God so loved us He made us, made us like Himself – and we rebelled against Him. God so loved us He gave His only Son, gave Him into our hands – and we nailed Him to a tree.
The Sacred Triduum plunges us into the Apostles’ Thursday crisis of faith, when they denied and fled. It immerses us in the Friday crisis of Jesus, our crisis of hope. Finally, on this Easter night, it confronts us with the crisis of all humanity: a crisis of love. Could God still love us even when we had killed His only Son? Could any love survive such unlove?
It’s the greatest romance and greatest tragedy, but there is comedy here as well. In St Mark’s Passion last Sunday there was a cameo role we only see every three years when we hear that particular account (Mk 14:51-52). It was a hot night in Gethsemane and a young fellow followed Christ into the garden wearing little more than the Ancient Near-Eastern equivalent of his underpants. The guards grabbed him but he fled away naked leaving his clothes in their hands. It was humiliating, no doubt, but a moment of comic relief for us onlookers amidst the bleakness of that Agonising Garden.
Well, St Mark tells us tonight, that on entering the tomb on Easter morning “They saw a young man dressed in a white robe and they were struck with amazement; but he said: Don’t worry; Jesus has risen, He is not here.” (Mk 16:1-7) Is this that same anonymous youth who only a few verses before was streaking away from the scene? Is this all humanity lost and confused, denuded of dignity and hope, sinful and sick, in all the rawness of need, now dressed in a glorious white alb, like our newly baptised soon will be?Fear not, he says, for love casts out fear. Go tell Peter and the lads Jesus is Risen. Go and tell Peter, in particular, for he who denied Christ three times must now tell Christ three times how much he loves Him. If the angels sing Holy, Holy, Holy, the Church built on Peter will sing Love, Love, Love. That love, tested in the crucible of infidelity, despair and denial these three days past, is reborn tonight in the Resurrection of faith, hope and love. On them Christ will build His Church and rebuild each of us.In a few moments we will be privileged to celebrate the Baptisms of Nitesh (Chand Lal), Jing (Dai), Jessica and Gabriella (Mendoza), Nimisha (Murugathasan), Jamie (Nixon), Anna Marie (Phillips), Leela (Harindran) and Chen (Wen); the receptions of David (Hamilton), Shirlene (Lopez), Beverley and Chathurika (Wambeck) and the Confirmation and First Communion of Eunice (Toriola) and Ivan (Pearson). The Easter Vigil was from ancient times the preferred time for Christian Initiation because it is a celebration of new life in Christ. As St Paul said tonight: “When we were baptised in Christ Jesus, we were baptised into His death … so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might live a new life” (Rom 6:3-4). For our catechumens and candidates, as for the rest of us, Easter says that God loves each one of us so much, He has woven the romance, tragedy and comedy of every human life forever with His own story. God loves us so much, that whatever our own crises of faith, hope and love these can be faced and conquered by His grace. Come out of the tomb with me, He says to all mankind tonight, Rise up to everlasting life and love!
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| Most Rev Anthony Fisher OP DD BA LlB BTheol DPhil Third Bishop of Parramatta |
The Homilies of Bishop Anthony Fisher
Homily - Easter Vigil of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 7 April 2012 |
| Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu |
Crisis in the Kingdom of God (A three-part Homily for the Triduum)
Part Three: Crisis of Love for All Humanity
Easter Vigil of the Resurrection, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta, 7 April 2012
Download an audio version of this homilyListen to this homily at Bishop Anthony's iTunes Podcasts
It’s the greatest story ever told: the story of God and man. It is above all a love story. God, as St Catherine of Siena put it, was pazzo d’amore, insane with love for us, from all eternity, even before we were made. Our First Reading tonight (Gen 1:1-2:2) recalls how He made us, in His own image, male and female, made for marriage, for fruitfulness and dominion, with Godlike reason, freedom, creativity and passion. He also made this universe for our sakes, for us to live and learn in, play and delight in, a universe in which to be lovers and beloved, God’s darlings. This same divine obsession holds us in being every moment of our existence. When we ourselves love, our hearts and minds expand, our communion with God deepens, our friendships grow warmer, the world is a better place. There is something divine in every act of love, in vows of marriage or religion, in acts of friendship, in kindness to colleagues and strangers, the poor and even enemies.
It’s the greatest love-story ever told – and yet also a story of broken hearts. The crisis in the Kingdom of God, a crisis of all humanity, is that we turned against the very love that creates and sustains us. This fall from grace, this ‘Original Sin’, has been a recurrent pattern ever since, so that there’s nothing original about it anymore. Pride, envy, lust, selfishness and grudges have dogged our history. Almost from the beginning the greatest romance was the greatest tragedy as well.
As human beings fell from grace they experienced a breakdown of relations with themselves, each other, creation and God. If anything this crisis of love is magnified today. In our culture, self-regard easily becomes self-obsession, self-serving and, when that fails, self-loathing. Loyalty is seen as weakness, other people as rivals. Alliances of convenience allow us to use each other’s bodies, minds and hearts, for pleasure or profit, without commitment. Our love for creation can be equally ambiguous. And there is much in contemporary culture that would dismiss our love of God altogether, reducing it to childish fantasy, ancient superstition, constraints imposed by a corrupt institution.
In this crisis of love we are both victims and perpetrators. Each of us has at some time hurt and been hurt. Each has loved not as well as we should and been loved not as well as we would. If we love well, we are at our most human and divine; but it costs, as God ‘learnt’ these three days past, when love cost Him His Son’s life.
The greatest love-story ever told is also the greatest tragedy: the story of God from the dawn of time, steadily holding out the hand of friendship, and of humanity muddling its way through, loving generously at times, middling well at others, not at all at others. God so loved us He made us, made us like Himself – and we rebelled against Him. God so loved us He gave His only Son, gave Him into our hands – and we nailed Him to a tree.
The Sacred Triduum plunges us into the Apostles’ Thursday crisis of faith, when they denied and fled. It immerses us in the Friday crisis of Jesus, our crisis of hope. Finally, on this Easter night, it confronts us with the crisis of all humanity: a crisis of love. Could God still love us even when we had killed His only Son? Could any love survive such unlove?
It’s the greatest romance and greatest tragedy, but there is comedy here as well. In St Mark’s Passion last Sunday there was a cameo role we only see every three years when we hear that particular account (Mk 14:51-52). It was a hot night in Gethsemane and a young fellow followed Christ into the garden wearing little more than the Ancient Near-Eastern equivalent of his underpants. The guards grabbed him but he fled away naked leaving his clothes in their hands. It was humiliating, no doubt, but a moment of comic relief for us onlookers amidst the bleakness of that Agonising Garden.
The Resurrection of faith, hope and love
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| Photo: Alphonsus Fok & Grace Lu |
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