Easter Joy! “I Am Who Am” Ever Present to You
“God so loved the world
that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have
eternal life.”
-John 3:16
“Have this mind among
yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of
God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And
being found in human form he humbled Himself and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.”
- Philippians 2:5-8
The Joy of the Easter Season continues; so also the
Easter meditation on the Divine Love revealed to us in Jesus – a Love made
visible with fullness and power on the Cross, a Love still with us in the
Spirit of the Risen Christ, and a Love that awaits us in the Heaven to come where
with ecstatic Joy we will experience that Love completely in God’s presence,
unveiled in all its Glory.
It is, as St. Paul says, a Love beyond all that we can
ask or imagine possible, a Love beyond what we dare to dream real. When I read
those awesome words from Philippians about Jesus emptying Himself of Divinity, I
am truly amazed. In fact Paul tells us of a Love that is unimaginable,
unfathomable – of a Love that is Grace and Mercy beyond belief.
What was it like to surrender all that Heaven is – for Jesus
to empty Himself of all that He knew as God in order to become flesh and dwell
among us? I think first of the magnificent scene from “Lord of The Rings” when
Arwen unveils the magnitude of her love for Aragorn. Under the silver light of
a moonlit sky in Rivendell, she surrenders her immortality as an Elf out of
love for Aragorn, someone from the world of mortal men. Her words, especially
against the backdrop of that beautiful scene, are beyond inspiring. They
graphically capture the magnificence of the love expressed in the Browning
Poem, “How Do I Love Thee”, “let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth
and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends
of being and Divine Life.”
So also is the love radiating from the words of Arwen
when she gives up her immortality for Aragorn: “I would rather share one
lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone. I choose a mortal
life. It is mine to give to whom I will, like my heart.” Amazing! Yet isn’t
that what Jesus says to us through His Incarnation? Precisely!
One might say, “Well, you have to keep in mind that Jesus
knew He was God. He knew that He would rise again and return with us to the
Father.” However that is true, it is still the case that Jesus as fully man and
fully mortal, embraced the Cross and His own death as any and all men must face
it – as events that terminate one’s earthly life. Somehow in a way no less than
how you or I have to face death, Jesus embraced His Passion and Death as all
mortals do. He truly risked having only one lifetime with humanity rather than
enduring all of eternity without us. And with His humanity He offered His Life and
ended His Life for a Dream: to save us and bring us back home to the Heart of
God.
Like it must be for all Christians, it was for Jesus as
well. As He faced suffering and death, He like us had to believe and hope that
the Spirit of the Father would raise Him back to Life. He like us had to
embrace death believing that by the Power of God with Him and in Him, he would
rise again and return to the Father. He had to believe as well that Risen and
Glorified he could by the Power of the Spirit draw us also to Himself - bring
us also with Him into that world beyond our world, and thus achieve His Dream
of having us with Him forever.
Such was and is the awesome love of Christ for us. And no
one should water it down by somehow saying that Jesus was God and thus didn’t
really go through His passion and Death as we do. The believer must not say
that or believe that! It undermines the magnitude of Jesus incredible Love. It
minimizes the magnificence of the world
seeing in the flesh a Love like only God can love.
Does the “agony in the Garden” of Gethsemane not teach us
anything? “And His sweat became as drops of blood falling to the ground…” Jesus,
the “Word made flesh”, fully embraced mortality by becoming one of us. He faced
the crucifixion and death to come exactly as all mortals do. Credit to Jesus
then the same courage of love that we credit to the saints empowered by the
Spirit and operating under the impulse of Grace. Jesus in His humanity was
strengthened by the Father in the same way as we are strengthened by Him. “As
the living Father has sent me, and as I live because of Him, so he who eats me
shall live because of me.” (Jn. 6:57)
Yes, Jesus has the Power to lay down His life, and the
Power to take it up again, but this Power He received from His Father. (Jn.
10:17-18) And in a way that is exactly as all mortals must experience, Jesus
had to believe that Power at work in Him would raise Him on the third day.
How if Jesus was fully man could it not be for Him as it
needs to be for us? Consider how it is for us and all humanity. In a way that
is nothing less than real and transforming that same Spirit and Power is at
work in us that was at work in Jesus. Under the impulse of that Spirit, the
person of Faith is exalted to the heights of courage for truth, justice, and
love. A Spirit and Love like only God can love takes hold of the human heart
open to God. And like St. Paul we have to believe that same Spirit of the
Father now at work in us can raise us from the dead even as it did Christ. “If
the Spirit of Him Who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised
Jesus from the dead will give Life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit
which dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)
Yet is it so difficult to believe that Jesus in His
humanity had to undergo the same experience of Faith as Paul, Mary, the saints,
and us? Let Jesus be fully human! Jesus in the fullness of His humanity also
had to believe! He had to believe that the Life, Spirit and Power that He had
drawn forth from the Father would raise Him as well.
Failing to see this we detract so much from the courage
of Christ’s Love, from a Love so much more than we can ask or imagine possible,
from a Love like only God can love. Let the full stature and measure of His heroic
Love touch us and reduce us to tears of Joy even as the heroic love of any man
of courage.
I am reminded of a story of such heroic love that occurred
only a few years ago. During the full fury of Hurricane Sandy a policeman
rescued a person from the surf on the coast of New Jersey. The person was being
carried out to sea by the waves of a rip tide driven to rage by hundred mile an
hour winds. The police officer went into the surf to save the person and he
did.
I’ll never forget the film of the news interview with the
officer after the rescue. As he spoke he was literally trembling, as if shaken
by a fear – an “agony” if you will – that shot right through him. He spoke of
how he really thought he was going to die as he went into the raging surf. In
fact, he was incredulous that he was still alive. As a Christian the policeman
could believe in his resurrection to life upon death, but his only certitude of
that reality was the certitude of Faith.
Yet for Jesus also in the fullness of his humanity there
was only the certitude of Faith. On Calvary Jesus went into the raging surf to
save us, and in doing so fully embraced the reality of death, the end and termination
of his earthly life. He embraced his “choice” at the moment of the Incarnation:
“I would rather share one lifetime with my children, than face all the ages of
eternity without them.” It was the Power of the Father that gave Jesus the fulfillment
of His Dream: to raise Him and us from the dead, and to have us with Him in His
Father’s house forever.
AN EASTER PRAYER FOR YOU
That Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in Love, may
have power to comprehend with all the Saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth of that Love, power to know the Love of Christ which surpasses
knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God…
That you may know that
Love which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, that it has never even entered into
the heart of a human being to conceive as possible… This God will reveal to you
through His Spirit…
- Thoughts based on St.
Paul, Eph. 3:17-19, and 1Cor. 2:
