No matter how empty or dark we may feel inside, when we cry out for grace, God reaches down into the graves we dig for ourselves, pulls us out and restores life to us.
Walking through the friary park towards the church the other day, I was caught up in my head with parish responsibilities and problems needing solving. Looking down at the path ahead of me and striding purposefully towards duties, my thoughts were interrupted by the loud twitter of a bird in the nearby bushes. I stopped and looked up and around me towards the bushes, and saw, as if for the first time, the blossoms on the bushes, the yellow daffodils in a row against the wall, the sunlight on the deep green leaves of the trees. At that moment, the whole aspect of the day altered, my mood changed, and something shifted inside me. I continued towards the church with a lighter step and a joyful outlook on the day.
It was not dramatic or profound; nothing deeply mysterious. Just a gentle touch within the ordinary; a simple moment of divine inbreaking into the familiar. As if from nowhere, grace blindsides us, and in that moment, things fall into perspective and the horizon of our minds open out. An unprompted joy stirs within, and for a moment, all anxieties are forgotten as we experience being held within a deeper reality filled with sacred meaning. This is the presence and power of the Risen Christ in the world.
The resurrection of Christ is both an historically located reality and a continually expanding reality. The cosmic significance of the tremendous spiritual power inherent in the resurrection cannot be contained in just one moment in history or one place on earth. That spiritually dynamic event vibrates and ripples through all of reality all the time. Like waves rippling out from a deep centre, the energy of resurrection (life, light, and love) flows out unceasingly through space and time. Unlike the rippling effect of water, the energy of the waves of grace flowing from the resurrection are not attenuated; their power not diminished, the further they extend from the centre. Like St. Bonaventure’s description of God (His centre is everywhere, and His circumference is nowhere), the grace of resurrection flows outward in an undiminishing energy field that is simultaneously everywhere, all the time. This grace gently and unexpectedly breaks upon our souls and interrupts the pattern of moods of our everyday consciousness. In these moments, love interrupts our fears, light breaks into our darkness, and life quickens in our spirit.
The resurrection pattern is inscribed into all reality: the cosmos, nature, living beings, and the inner life of the person. This pattern of birth, growth, decline, death…. and then rebirth, is the paradigm of the paschal mystery expressing itself across the whole spectrum of all existence. Embracing the dynamic of diminishment and death to enter a deeper quality of life in rebirth is at the heart of Christ’s teaching, and exemplified in His passion, death, and resurrection. The seed must die if the plant is to spring forth and flourish, to live into eternal life we must die to self, the least will be the greatest, the last shall be first, and if we want to live the fullness of life, we must die to the values of the world. These paradoxes are the very rhythm of all processes, natural and spiritual, because they reflect the inner life of God Himself. The transpersonal outpouring in self-emptying love into another describes the interrelationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. It describes the outpouring of love in the creation, the self-renunciation of the incarnation, and the transforming power of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
So, when we speak of the dynamic energy of the resurrection reverberating throughout history, we are in fact speaking of the very dynamic of God’s inner life pulsating throughout all reality. We place ourselves within the energy field of this wave of spiritual love when we learn to surrender to this divine rhythm in our inner life and our life in the world. Humble surrender and trustful acceptance of the inevitable realities of disappointment, failure, discouragement, diminishment, illness and aging, are not a giving-up, but a giving-in. A giving-in to the divine dynamic imprinted in the very heart of all reality. It is an abandonment into hope, and a sharing in Christ’s self-sacrificing love in the incarnation and the crucifixion…. and ultimately, a share in His resurrection. Sometimes, through the kindness of God, resurrection grace sneaks up from behind and transforms our day.
Pope Francis, whose death we mourn, and whose rising to new life in Christ we celebrate, speaks of this quickening of life in our spirits when we unite ourselves with Christ and live into His resurrected life:
To have life, it is enough to fix one’s eyes on the Crucified and Risen Jesus, encountering him in the sacraments and in prayer, recognizing that he is present, believing in him, letting oneself be touched by his grace and guided by his example, experiencing the joy of loving like him. Every living encounter with Jesus enables us to have more life.
friar Terence Bateman OFM Conv
