Well, I don’t know about you but I am very tired. It has
been a very intense week, a very emotional week, and I know it has been for many
of you because you have told me so, and made me even more emotional.
When we got home from the Good Friday liturgy yesterday, I put
on a film and it was The Passion of the Christ, the Mel Gibson film. I
am very fond of that film because I watched it in the cinema on the day that
something profound happened. I am not going to tell you about it but it was
something profound. It was just me and two nuns in the cinema watching the film
that day. If you haven’t seen it, it is a very moving, powerful, but very
graphic depiction of what happened to Our Lord on Good Friday. I won’t embarrass
her too much but my mum was very upset by the film. (Had I known she would be, I
wouldn’t have put it on.)
It’s an amazing film and there is a wonderful scene where
Jesus is brought into Caiaphas’ place to be questioned. There’s the moment
where Peter denied Jesus three times and then Jesus, who has been beaten and is
knocked to the floor looks at Peter and Peter looks at him, and Peter weeps and
runs away. In running away he comes across Our Lady, Mary, the mother of Our
Lord, Mary Magdalene and John, the beloved disciple. He goes to his knees on
the floor and cries because he has betrayed Jesus. Mary, the mother of Our Lord
reaches out to him and he says ‘No, Mother, I am not worthy because I have
betrayed him.’ We don’t really know what happens to him immediately after that.
But what we do know, the only record we have is of three people, Mary, the mother
of Our Lord, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved disciple. (Plus a couple of other
women in some accounts.)
The question I have got is ‘where were the others’? What happened
to them because all we know is that they were in the Upper Room, they were in
the Garden of Gethsemane and when Jesus was arrested they fled. Did they go
back to the Upper Room? Were they hiding there? Because that’s where Jesus
found them after his resurrection. What were they doing? What were they saying?
Because they all, like us, were in the same boat, because they, like us turned
their backs on Jesus like we turned our back on Jesus on Maundy Thursday, abandoning
him in the darkness.
We left the Church in darkness and then, on Good Friday, we
faced the stark Church, bare of decoration. And I know that for many of you it
was a very emotional experience to come and venerate the cross. But what were
the disciples doing? That’s the question. I want to know and I know that I will
never find out but I am curious because we, like them, turned our backs.
But what do we do next? We come together in the night. We
gather in the night to welcome the new light of Christ. Even though we have
turned our backs on him, he is risen from the dead and he will never turn his
back on us.
For those of you for whom, like me, it has been a very
emotional week, this is the joy that finishes it because without that pain and
without that emotion, without that realisation of how Christ suffered and how
he was betrayed, how he bled, naked and thirsty for us, without that realisation
we cannot have that joy, without that realisation, we cannot have the joy—truly
have the joy—of Easter because otherwise we simply go from welcoming him in on
Palm Sunday with shouts of ‘Hosanna’ to celebrating that he is risen. But what
happened in between?
We are here and we are here to celebrate that risen life. I
don’t know about you but, as we were listening to those vigil readings, which
are long, and it can be uncomfortable to sit through, but they remind us of
this story of salvation that has been going since long before we were even
here. We step into it. We step into the story of salvation and celebrate the
risen Christ.
All that suffering, all that pain, is gone.
If Jesus had simply died on the cross, it would have been
worth nothing. Hundreds of people were crucified. Hundreds. If Jesus had simply
dies, he would have just been one of those hundreds but the fact that he is
risen from the dead, the fact that he has defeated that which none of us can
defeat, means that our hope is restored. Our faith is restored and, whatever we
have been through, we can enter into that new life.
We are now going to reaffirm our baptismal promises. This is
the moment in which we stand and we say ‘I want to enter into that new life’
and the holy water will be liberally sprinkled on each of you as you do so.
Let us stand and enter into that new life.
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