April 14, 2006

Easter 2006

It is surely not by chance that Easter is celebrated in the springtime. Christ chose His "Hour" fittingly during Passover. It seems certain to me that he who loved the lilies of the field and the mustard seed whose power would provide nesting places for the birds of the air, chose spring also for its symbolic beauty and significance.

Spring is the new flourishing of life, when the deepest vitality in all living things brings bloom and leaf and youth. Vitality is its name.

I fear that we, who should learn from spring's symbolism, respond instead with, sometimes, sad sentimentality. We, whose deepest vitality should ever be at work, are mostly satisfied with superficial levels of consciousness, sprinkled with occasional moments of prayer. Our act of existing, which is the deepest source of our vitality, rarely comes to mind. We exist at the surface levels of consciousness. We are hollow men, to use Eliot's phrase. If nature followed our example, instead of God's design, there would be no spring.

We, who are blessed with the gift of Intellect, should be at home in the house of Truth. We should know it and love it as our own place. Our lives should be shaped according to the principles of its sublime architecture. We should grieve when we dishonor it, and rejoice and experience real joy when we honor and obey it.

How are you and I to enter the house of Truth? Two brief sentences in Aquinas are fundamental. They are: "I am" and "Will it." The first pertains to the act of existence, which is God, and the other is the beginning of sanctity. To live in Truth I must command my mind to do the necessary spade-work. The "I" that I am springs directly from my act of existence, which is "the direct and proper effect of God's creative act." All that I am is constituted by it. All that is true in me flows from it. By nature I am made in the image of God and my life should and can consist of an effort to use mind and will, in co-operation with God, to bring about the unity and beauty which my very existence promises.

Because of sin, "by myself I can do nothing," but "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." Christ did not come to replace our nature, but to fulfill it, and to raise it to levels of unity with His Father beyond our ability to understand. He prayed to His Father, after instituting the Eucharist, for His apostles and for us "that they all may be one as Thou Father in me and I in Thee, that they may be one in us, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." Today the world does not seem to believe. Our belief should therefore be the stronger.

During Easter let us ask God to give us deeper insights into the mystery of His love. Put aside our worldly concerns or, rather, put them in His Hands, lest we become like the man so fascinated with the bulb that he could not see the light.

Have a Blessed Easter.

Fr. Cornelius O’Brien