While every Sunday is a ‘Little Easter’, today is Pascha, the day of Jesus’ Holy Resurrection, the day, in matins of the Orthodox, the Eastern lung of the Church – for we must always breathe with both the Eastern and Western lungs of the Church – we pray: It is the day of the Resurrection, let us be radiant for the feast, and let us embrace one another. Let us say, Brothers, even to those who hate us, let us forgive all things on the Resurrection, and thus let us cry out: Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs lavishing life.
With the Sequence in Holy Mass this morning the Church in the West proclaims: Christ the just one paid the price, reconciling sinners to the Father.
Not every human being is baptized, filled with the radiance of Christ Risen. We who are, are mandated by baptism to radiate Christ to everyone.
Billions of our brothers and sisters, some unknowingly, are still on a hungry journey in search of Christ our life.
Some, however, perhaps in ignorance, perhaps not, give themselves over to the cold, hate-filled darkness of satan, and horrific acts of evil against other human beings result.
No one except Christ is able see with pure eyes into the heart of someone else. We can only observe objectively that such and such an act is an evil act.
Referring to the violent terrorist attack against people participating in Easter Mass in two Catholic Churches, Sunday service in an Evangelical Church, vacationing in three hotels, all this in Sri Lanka, with hundreds dead and injured, Pope Francis condemned the violence and added: “Before the many sufferings of our time, may the Lord of life not find us cold and indifferent,….May He make us builders of bridges, not walls.“
One may well ask what is the connection between all the above and Jesus with the Woman caught in adultery?
There is a similarity between the hatred of those who accused her, were seeking to kill Jesus, and what lurks in the heart of every perpetrator of terrorism.
Those who are incapable of repentance for their own sins are not only incapable of reconciliation with other human beings, but the poison of self-hatred, which renders repentance impossible, keeps us in a bondage which hobbles the ability to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and thus to live out the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind…….You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [22:37-39]
Another connection flows from the Resurrection of Jesus and the encounter in the Garden of the Resurrection, between Jesus Risen and another, formerly adulterous, repentant woman: ……she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to Him, “Sir, if you carried Him away, tell me where you laid Him, and I will take Him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher. [cf. Jn. 20: 1-18]
Only by encountering the Risen Christ, not simply in baptism but through lives that strive to be peaceful, holy, without sin, and attentively gazing upon Jesus the Beloved, who never takes His loving eyes away from us, will we then hear Him speak our name, and at that moment our eyes become open to see Him, yes to see ourselves as a real person created in the image and likeness of God.
Without such hearing, and accepting, without such seeing and surrendering to His loving embrace, we remain strangers to ourselves, split, bent towards self, through sin walking, as it were, beside ourselves, and every other human being is as unrecognizable to us as all the creatures paraded before Adam until the Lord put him to sleep and when Adam awoke he opened his eyes, was able to see one like himself.
Only when we recognize every other human being as one like ourselves are, we able to love one another, forgive one another, to see our real self, repent and forgive ourselves.
It is to experience the immense grace, so long as we live on this earth, in each moment to begin again: for His merciful love, His Divine Mercy, His radiant-healing Beauty shines upon us in every moment.
This Risen Jesus, though not yet having suffered, died, risen, is the very Jesus present to the woman and it is no accident how St. John phrases the beginning of verse 10: When Jesus had raised Himself up…..
Jesus, loving this deeply hurt, embarrassed, frightened human being spoke “Woman” with tenderness, love, respect, the way we should speak the name of any person or group for everyone is a brother, a sister, even if we have not , or will never, on this earth, meet them face to face.
V. 10 cont.: ….and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
Jesus knew full well where they were, like most predators in the animal kingdom, and most human beings given over to crime, hiding away from daylight, more deeply, trying to hide away from Christ our Light, from whom no one can hide.
Jesus is comforting this frightened woman through His question assuring her she is now safe from harm.
She replied, “No one, sir.” [v.11]
We, through baptism, have the power to lift the burden of condemnation off the backs of those who sin against us by being Christ-like forgivers of others.
Imagine the relief beginning to pour into this woman’s life as she realized those who had condemned her and were prepared to murder her were gone!
V.11 cont.: Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
While it is true, as sung in this morning’s Holy Mass in the sequence: Christ the just one paid the price, reconciling sinners to the Father., to participate in this reconciliation we must have truly contrite and repentant hearts, compassionate and forgiving hearts for others AND avoid further sin.
That latter may seem as a sort of moving horizon goal for most of us, nonetheless it is something which, constantly asking the help of the Most Holy Spirit, we must always work towards and if we fall then go to, rejoice in, the grace of sacramental confession-reconciliation, resuming the journey in the Light of, and walking with, Jesus Risen.
Walking with open, humble, honest, yes often with wounded, confused hearts, with Jesus Risen, like the Emmaus disciples we within, the journey, when He speaks and enlightens all we have spoken of, encounter Jesus glorified in the Holy Eucharist wherein He feeds and strengthen us with Himself.
The more we strive to be faithful disciples the more we will radiate the Light of Christ Risen and the less hatred and violence there will be within the human family.
© 2019 Fr. Arthur Joseph
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