Living Jesus' Fasting in the Desert and His Passion

With the public celebration of Mass suspended during this time of the coronavirus public health crisis, how else might we and our families keep the mysteries of Holy Week and joy of Easter alive given these social distancing restrictions and the call by public leaders that we stay at home as much as possible?

Well, our Lenten journey is meant to draw us closer to the Lord in a special way as we approach Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. This year is no exception. While this Holy Week we are unable to come together to celebrate Mass, still this time has offered us a couple of particular ways to join with Jesus precisely in that pain and distress we feel. It is the Gospel of redemptive sacrifice.

At the beginning of Lent, we fasted and recalled how before He began His ministry, He went out into the desert for 40 days, fasting and praying in that emptiness of the wilderness. This recalls too how the Israelites had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until that blessed day that they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. At the end of Lent on Good Friday, we again fast as we meditate upon the suffering and crucifixion of our Lord, followed by the still emptiness in the world as His dead body lies in the tomb on Holy Saturday.

This year, we have not only remembered Jesus’ 40 days in the desert and the Passion, we have in a sense lived them with a fast far greater than going without a meal or two. As we endured with Christ His deprivation in the wilderness – His “quarantine,” for that word is derived from the Latin meaning “forty” – so too this Holy Week, perhaps we might join our sufferings to those of Jesus in His Passion: taking upon ourselves the feeling of being abandoned as the Apostles ran away, taking upon ourselves this Cross of social distancing imposed on us like Simon the Cyrenian, feeling the agony of the nails and thorns that Jesus endured and are now being experienced by those afflicted by this horrible disease, and thirsting on the Cross.

In this way, by offering up our miseries to the Lord, in giving to Him our suffering as we take upon ourselves His suffering in our very own personal lives, even from our homes, this Holy Week takes on a whole new meaning – by joining with Him, we participate in the work of salvation.

“Every man has his own share in the Redemption,” wrote St. John Paul II. “In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ” (Salvifici Doloris, 19). Indeed, St. Paul rejoiced in his own sufferings, saying, “In my flesh, I complete what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church” (Colossians. 1:24).

These past weeks have been a trial and tribulation for the Christian faithful and the whole world unlike any we have experienced in our memory. It is the fervent hope and prayer of us all that we can return to our lives and jobs and the public celebration of the liturgy as quickly as possible. But this much we can be certain about – the Easter of our personal and social life will come. It might not coincide precisely with the calendar this year, but dawn will break. A new day in the rising of the glorious Son in the world cannot be denied.

We who have walked in darkness will see a great light; and we are children of that light (Isaiah 9:1; Ephesians 5:8).

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Her, O Lord

+ Greeting
In this moment of sorrow, the Lord is in our midst and comforts us with His word: Blessed are the sorrowful; they shall be consoled.

Let us pray:
Loving and merciful God, we entrust our sister Rosemarie to your mercy. You loved her greatly in this life: now that she is freed from all its cares, give her happiness and peace forever.
The old order has passed away: welcome her now into paradise where there will be no more sorrow, no more weeping or pain, but only peace and joy with Jesus, your Son, and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever.
R: Amen.

Gospel Reading
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.
The sisters sent word to Jesus to inform Him, “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this, He said, “This illness is not to end in death, but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of Him.
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”
Martha replied, “I know he will rise again, in the resurrection on the last day."
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he should die, yet will he live, and whoever is alive and believes in me will never die.”
The Gospel of the Lord.

Litany
Saints of God, come to her aid. Come to meet her, angels of the Lord.
R: Receive her soul and present her to God the Most High.

May Christ, who called you, take you to Himself; may angels lead you to Abraham’s side.
R: Receive her soul and present her to God the Most High.

Give her eternal rest, O Lord, and may your light shine on her forever.
R: Receive her soul and present her to God the Most High.

God of mercy, hear our prayers and be merciful to your daughter Rosemarie, whom you have called from this life. Welcome her into the company of your saints, in the kingdom of light and peace. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
R: Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer
With God there is mercy and fullness of redemption; let us pray as Jesus taught us to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Prayer of Consolation
God of all consolation, in your unending love and mercy for us, you turn the darkness of death into the dawn of new life. Show compassion to your people in their sorrow.
Be our refuge and our strength to lift us from the darkness of this grief to the peace and light of your presence.
Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by dying for us, conquered death and by rising again, restored life. May we then go forward eagerly to meet Him and after our life on earth be reunited with our departed brothers and sisters, where every tear will be wiped away.
R: Amen.

Prayer of Commendation
Lord Jesus, our Redeemer, you willingly gave yourself up to death so that all people might be saved and pass from death into a new life. Listen to our prayers, look with love on your people who mourn and pray for their sister Rosemarie. Lord Jesus, holy and compassionate: forgive Rosemarie her sins. By dying you opened the gates of life for those who believe in you: do not let our sister be parted from you, but by your glorious power, give her light, joy, and peace in heaven where you live forever and ever.
R: Amen.

Still Present in Our Hearts

Rosemarie passed peacefully in Las Vegas on Wednesday, April 17, in the arms of her devoted husband of 40 years, Alan, and in the presence of her seven loving children. Throughout her life, Rosemarie showed a passion for life. Her energy and courage in the face of adversity was especially an inspiration to those that were fortunate enough to be around her.

Rosemarie loved her family, a family that included many people that she adopted as her own. And once a mother, always a mother, so she has now gone forward to help prepare a place for us in the house of the Father.

A Daughter at the Foot of the Cross

Shortly before her passing, while she was in the midst of her own passion, Marilyn's daughter wrote a beautiful and inspiring reflection -- her mom had competed well, she had finished the race. Melissa graciously gives her permission to post this. Next week we will receive ashes on the head and be told to remember, "you are dust and unto dust you shall return." May this reflection be of help in times like these in your own lives.

My Mom's not a Runner, but She Taught Me How to Be One
by Melissa, February 24, 2011

I've spent the last week and a half with my mom here at [the] Hospital. She has stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The lymphoma has passed into her central nervous system, presenting itself in her spinal fluid. It's become clear to my brothers and me that she is nearing the end of her life.

Since I've been here, I've been thinking a lot about running. I haven't run since before Thanksgiving, because I had foot surgery. About a week ago, I looked at my calendar and counted the weeks since I've been out of my walking cast. It was exactly six weeks--and my surgeon told me that I could start running at six weeks; but I told him I would probably wait a little longer. I sort of made up my mind that I would wait till March...today is February 25.

When I came down to [Kentucky] almost two weeks ago, my plans were to come and spend the weekend with my mom and take her to the hospital for the lumbar puncture they planned for her, then I was going to get her settled in and then drive home. My brothers would be spending time with her during the evening. But for some reason, I just didn't want to leave. I wanted to be here when we heard the results of that test, and to be with her as the doctors decided what to do next. My brother Brian was coming down from [New York] on the weekend, and my other two brothers were working during the day, so I thought it might be nice for Mom to have some company during the daytime.

I felt torn about it, but I came back to [Indiana] for a day to take care of some things . . . I came back here the next day. I packed as many shirts, underwear and socks as I could, plus three cardigan sweaters and a pair of dress shoes. I thought about packing my running shoes and some gear, but decided I wouldn't feel like running while I was here.

********************

My mom's lived with lymphoma since 1995. It's 2011, people. That's sixteen years. It's come back maybe two or three times--I don't remember. And, she is 78 years old.

But this time, it was different. Something happened early last year, and we noticed Mom started changing, at least her cognition did. She started saying things that didn't make a lot of sense, or she seemed unreasonable about some things, about decisions that had to be made. Her doctor referred her to a neurologist, because she started having these nasty headaches, and pain in her eye. She was in the hospital in the fall, having been diagnosed with Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, a rare type of cancer. She had to have her blood "cleaned out"--excess protein had built up in it; and so she had to have plasmapheresis performed to bring it back to normal. But her pain came back. In January, the neurologist believed that she had Tolosa-Hunt syndrome, and treated her accordingly with massive doses of steroids to reduce the inflammation they thought had developed around her eye. But the pain returned, and her oncologist searched for the answer in her spinal fluid. If he didn't find it there, he would have biopsied the temporal lobe of her brain.

Indeed, the lymphoma had spread to her spinal fluid. Neither chemotherapy nor radiation could get rid of the cancer this time. The treatment plan shifted to comfort care. Dr. H., Mom's oncologist, said the word "hospice" as three of us kids talked to him on the phone about her prognosis. I swear my heart just about broke in two.

**********************

So what does my running have to do with my mom, and the fact that she is dying from cancer?

I've thought a few times about how I'd like to go running since I've been here. Running changed my life when I began 2 1/2 years ago. I discovered not only the physical benefits, but that my life improved mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I started running half-marathons that first year, and it's my favorite race. I've not done a marathon--I've heard they're just hell. I don't have my shoes though, and I need to wear particular shoes that work well with my crazy foot. So I haven't run.

But I've watched Mom over the past couple of weeks now, spending time up here in this room with her. I've watched what most people would call a "decline"--from the unbearable pain she felt because she didn't want to take her pain medicine, to walking around all wobbly, to sitting up, to talking with us in rare lucid moments. She's experiencing many of the signs of approaching death: seeing things or people that we can't, sleeping all the time, the agitation. She completely stopped eating and drinking two days ago. My three older brothers and I have all watched our mom's health deteriorate before our eyes. But I'm seeing something different. I see her moving forward.

Over the past two years, I've run in probably thirty different races. I've never been a good runner, not fast at all. My foot surgeon said to me, "I don't know why you all do it. You all look miserable! Like you're not having a good time at all!" I thought that was kind of funny. Yes, running can be painful and difficult, but we don't do it because we're masochistic; I'd bet that most of my friends would say they run because it's difficult. Why would anyone do that? Because after our run is over, we know we've done something that was a challenge and we accomplished it. The sense of victory we feel, even if not running a race, is there for us at the end of every run--even if it's a bad one.

So I look back over the last two weeks, and I think about my mom running this big, long race. Her race is longer than any one I've ever done. I've been thinking about St. Paul's famous quote from his [second] letter to Timothy: "I have competed well; I have finished the race." (Thank you to Anthony Hopkins for portraying St. Paul in a movie--it's because of him that I remember this quote.)

In the community of running, I've never been good enough to be competitive, but I learned what it means to support other runners. We always want to see our friends run well. Running injuries, illness, age-related foot and leg problems, messed up joints--these all get us down and keep us from running, but we always get back to it. . . . And we cheer each other on. The sound of my friends' voices calling out, "Good job, Melissa!" as I approach a finish line several minutes after them, often gives me that extra surge that I need to fly across it, not hobble.

You often hear runners say, "Run your own race." I've run in events where I tried running with other folks for a while, and sometimes that works. I ran what would have been my fastest 5K ever with my friend Steve (although the distance was cut short by the front-runner who was misguided by course sentries). But I also ran an event last spring, a 12-miler, which I will forever remember as my worst event ever. I ran the first six miles with two buddies of mine, but the pace was too fast; and I begged them to leave me and run ahead after that first half. I finished on my own, completely exhausted and disappointed that I didn't focus on my own pace, and that I had chosen to follow theirs.

When a person is dying, we know that she must do so on her own terms. We may think that a person is very near death, yet they linger. I asked a nurse this morning if it was wrong for me to anticipate my mom's death. Is it wrong for me to look forward to it? I'm certainly not getting impatient, like you'd wait for the cable guy to show up; it's more like this: I don't want her to suffer any more. I don't want for her to have to linger. It's such a strange feeling: we never want to lose our loved ones, but we don't want them to be stuck in place, either.

So I find myself cheering for her. I am on the sidelines, clapping and calling out her name. She has to run her own race; she must complete this journey herself and I cannot do it for her. She cannot go faster, yet I don't want to do anything that would slow her down. I cheer for her, and encourage her.

In the movie "The Passion," we see Simon of Cyrene forced to help Jesus carry his cross. I will never forget the look on the man's face when he realized he had to do it. At first he refused, but he had no choice--the Roman guards gave him no choice. As Jesus journeyed on the way to Calvary, Simon became more and more supportive of him. About halfway there, Simon puts his arm around the cross, and Jesus' shoulder at the same time. And he looks in Jesus' eyes, letting Him know silently that he is there. And as they make it up the hill, Simon says, "We're almost there, almost there." Simon's refusal to accept the burden of help transformed into a passionate commitment to see Jesus to the end. Again, I see the parallel with our mom. She's on a long, challenging journey, but I want to see her through to the end. I want to say, "You can make it, Mom. I will stay beside you as you travel on this path." But I don't carry a cross--I'm just here.

One would think, that if a person dies from cancer, that they are defeated by it. I'm starting to understand, that's not necessarily true. Just as I have never been a fast runner, and I've never won a race, my mother has not "beaten" cancer. But she hasn't been defeated, either. When this is over, we can say with certainty that my mother has fought the good fight; she has kept her eye on the prize. She will have finished the race. And that is the best kind of victory.

As I was reflecting on these things with a nurse this morning, I realized that all the life lessons I thought I had learned from running, I have actually learned from my mom. I see my mom pushing forward through this challenge. She's never given up. She doesn't stop just because it's too hard. She goes the distance--an ultramarathon of races. She goes through this process at her own pace. She'll conclude her life, run her own race, on her own terms--not when I'm ready, or anyone else. And like in my races, she'll go before me, and I know that when it's time for me to run my final race, she'll be cheering for me at the finish.

Marilyn went ahead to the House of the Father on Sunday, after they had prayed the chaplet of Divine Mercy, having also received all the last sacraments.

A few days before that, Melissa gave an update about these final days.

Mom has indeed settled in here in the Hospice Care Center. Yesterday before coming, she was very restless, sitting and standing constantly. Once she came here, everything changed. She relaxed and stopped the standing. She went to sleep, albeit sitting up. Later, she laid her head back. She's been sleeping heavily ever since. She has not taken food or water since Monday.

The staff here have encouraged us to speak quietly, to touch her, and reassure her that she is safe and it's OK to sleep. They also said that she might be afraid -- which I had never even considered. I felt so sad when I realized that I hadn't thought about that. But, the nurse asked her if she was afraid, and Mom somehow indicated that she didn't want to go to sleep; she was afraid she wouldn't wake up.

I have been telling her she's safe and that it's OK to sleep. I've also told her that we will be fine and told her especially that I will be, that C---- will be taking care of me. And I told her that we're taking care of her. I also told her that I've asked for angels to guide her on her journey, and that it's OK to go with them. . . .

Thank you for the prayers and keep them coming. I know He hears every whisper and sees every tear, and it all amounts to love in the end.

The funeral was bittersweet -- sad, but not overly so. The presence of faith helped a lot in that regard. "Blessed are those who mourn." Such faith does not totally eliminate the sadness, but it does provide hope -- the hearts of the mourners are made not so heavy by the Lord's assurance that, by the power of His love, all things are made new, and even death is transformed to life.

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Requiem æternam dona ei

Go forth, Christian soul, from this world in the name of God the almighty Father, who created you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you, May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God in Zion, with Mary, the virgin Mother of God, with Joseph and all the angels and saints.

May Angels lead you into paradise;
may the Martyrs receive you at your coming
and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.
May a choir of Angels receive you,
and with Lazarus, who once was poor,
may you have eternal rest.

May eternal light shine on your daughter Marilyn, O Lord, with all Your saints forever, for You are rich in mercy. Give her eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on her forever, for You are rich in mercy.

Amen.

_______________

St. Augustine, pray for her as you prayed upon the loss of your mother, St. Monica
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St. Joseph, Pray for Those Who Walk in the Valley of Death

O St. Joseph, virgin father of Jesus and most pure spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pray for Marilyn and all who are sick to the same Jesus, the Son of God, that being defended by the power of His grace and striving dutifully in life, they may be crowned by Him at the hour of death.

St. Joseph, whose protection is so great, so strong, so prompt before the throne of God, we place in thee all our interests and desires. O St. Joseph, assist Marilyn by thy powerful intercession and obtain for her all spiritual blessings through thy foster Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord.

O St. Joseph, let us never weary contemplating thee and Jesus asleep in thine arms. Let us fear not approach while He reposes near thy heart. Press Him in our name and kiss His fine head for us, and ask Him to return the kiss when we draw our dying breath.

St. Joseph, patron of departing souls, pray for Marilyn and us.

O Blessed Joseph, you gave your last breath in the loving embrace of Jesus and Mary. When the seal of death shall close her life, come with Jesus and Mary to aid Marilyn and all the faithful. Obtain for her and her family this solace for that hour - to die with their holy arms around her. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we commend her soul, living and dying, into your sacred arms. Amen.
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The Passion of a Loved One

Pray for my Aunt Marilyn, who now is suffering with Jesus on the Cross, and pray for her family, who stands at the foot of the Cross, with Mary, a sword piercing their hearts.

The Loss of a Loved One
originally posted November 3, 2009

In his ADW blog posting, "Good Grief," Msgr. Charles Pope writes about the feelings of grief associated with the death of someone we love. He writes:

Grief is one of the most painful and terrible emotions we can experience. It can crush us like a ton of bricks or loom over us like a dark cloud. Sometimes in sudden loss we just go numb only to discover that numbness is not a lack of feeling at all.

What Msgr. Pope describes is worse, far worse, than merely feeling bad. Make no mistake, the closest thing that there is to Hell on earth is the sudden loss of a loved one. To have someone near and dear to you suddenly ripped away from you, leaving nothing but a gaping wound and the emptiness of being all alone.

Of course, the fortunate person is the one who has faith and, consequently has hope, the confident assurance that the deceased loved one is not forever lost, but by the grace of Christ, lives in Him still. By the power of transcendent love, communion with such person is still possible even after "death." That understanding does provide some measure of comfort, even though on a more emotional level there is sadness from the person being sorely missed.

On the other hand, there are those who do not have such faith and, consequently, have no hope. For them, the deceased is gone, totally and forever. For them, all that is left is the abyss. And then there are those whose loved ones did not die, but merely rejected and abandoned them. While one is happy they are not dead, the loss of that love from a break-up is just as real; they may not be physically dead, but they are dead to the heart. In both of these cases, what we see is a glimpse of Hell.

The permanent loss of love, eternal abandonment, the resulting feeling of emptiness. All of these have the potential to lead to excruciating mental and emotional pain and angst, as well as spritual suffering. If we feel all of these things from the loss of a loved human person, imagine how much worse it would be if it were the heart-wrenching loss of love that results from separation from God? If you think that the anxiety you feel from the loss of a human loved one is unbearable, and you feel that your insides are all twisted up and feel like they are turning inside out, and you feel nothing but utter despair of the pain ever going away, all that is just a taste of what Hell is like, where we are eternally separated from He who is Love itself.

Whatever you do, don't let that happen. Grab onto God as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Now, grabbing onto Him might necessarily mean clinging to Him while on the Cross, it might mean having to endure the Passion with Him, but it is by the Passion that suffering is destroyed. It is through the Cross that we reach the Resurrection.

Pain and suffering and hardship in this world cannot be avoided. You cannot run away from them. They will eventually catch up to you. Eventually they will ambush you. The only way you can overcome the ambush is by charging through it with Christ. The only way that pain and suffering and hardship are defeated are by embracing them with Christ, grabbing ahold of them and having them transformed by the power of the Cross. Only by grabbing them and transforming them are they defeated. Only by the transformative power of love on the Cross do they lose their sting and power to hurt.

So, grab onto the Lord as if your life and happiness and well-being depended on it. Because they do.

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"I have seen the Lord"

On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. . . .

Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been. And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

She said to them, "They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they laid Him." When she had said this, 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.

Jesus said to her, "Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and what He told her.

--John 20:1, 11-18

Filii et Filiae

The Cure for Death Exists

Homily of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Easter Vigil
Saint Peter's Basilica
3 April 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

An ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal book “The life of Adam and Eve” recounts that, in his final illness, Adam sent his son Seth together with Eve into the region of Paradise to fetch the oil of mercy, so that he could be anointed with it and healed. The two of them went in search of the Tree of Life, and after much praying and weeping on their part, the Archangel Michael appeared to them, and told them they would not obtain the oil of the Tree of Mercy and that Adam would have to die.

Subsequently, Christian readers added a word of consolation to the Archangel’s message, to the effect that after 5,500 years, the loving King, Christ, would come, the Son of God who would anoint all those who believe in Him with the oil of His mercy. “The oil of mercy from eternity to eternity will be given to those who are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. Then the Son of God, Christ, abounding in love, will descend into the depths of the earth and will lead your father into Paradise, to the Tree of Mercy.”

This legend lays bare the whole of humanity’s anguish at the destiny of illness, pain and death that has been imposed upon us. Man’s resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere – people have constantly thought – there must be some cure for death. Sooner or later it should be possible to find the remedy not only for this or that illness, but for our ultimate destiny – for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must exist. Today too, the search for a source of healing continues. Modern medical science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong life more and more.

But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would that be a good thing?

Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation.

The true cure for death must be different. It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this current life. It would have to transform our lives from within. It would need to create a new life within us, truly fit for eternity: it would need to transform us in such a way as not to come to an end with death, but only then to begin in fullness.

What is new and exciting in the Christian message, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was and is that we are told: yes indeed, this cure for death, this true medicine of immortality, does exist. It has been found. It is within our reach.

In baptism, this medicine is given to us. A new life begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.

To this, some, perhaps many, will respond: I certainly hear the message, but I lack faith. And even those who want to believe will ask: but is it really so? How are we to picture it to ourselves? How does this transformation of the old life come about, so as to give birth to the new life that knows no death?

Once again, an ancient Jewish text can help us form an idea of the mysterious process that begins in us at baptism. There it is recounted how the patriarch Enoch was taken up to the throne of God. But he was filled with fear in the presence of the glorious angelic powers, and in his human weakness he could not contemplate the face of God. “Then God said to Michael,” to quote from the book of Enoch, “‘Take Enoch and remove his earthly clothing. Anoint him with sweet oil and vest him in the robes of glory!’ And Michael took off my garments, anointed me with sweet oil, and this oil was more than a radiant light … its splendour was like the rays of the sun. When I looked at myself, I saw that I was like one of the glorious beings” (Ph. Rech, Inbild des Kosmos, II 524).

Precisely this – being reclothed in the new garment of God – is what happens in baptism, so the Christian faith tells us. To be sure, this changing of garments is something that continues for the whole of life. What happens in baptism is the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life – it makes us fit for eternity, in such a way that, robed in the garment of light of Jesus Christ, we can appear before the face of God and live with Him forever.

In the rite of baptism, there are two elements in which this event is expressed and made visible in a way that demands commitment for the rest of our lives.

There is, first of all, the rite of renunciation and the promises. In the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the west, the symbol of darkness, sunset, death and hence the dominion of sin. The one to be baptized turned in that direction and pronounced a threefold “no”: to the devil, to his pomp and to sin. The strange word “pomp,” that is to say the devil’s glamour, referred to the splendour of the ancient cult of the gods and of the ancient theatre, in which it was considered entertaining to watch people being torn limb from limb by wild beasts.

What was being renounced was a type of culture that ensnared man in the adoration of power, in the world of greed, in lies, in cruelty. It was an act of liberation from the imposition of a form of life that was presented as pleasure and yet hastened the destruction of all that was best in man.

This renunciation – albeit in less dramatic form – remains an essential part of baptism today. We remove the “old garments,” which we cannot wear in God’s presence. Or better put: we begin to remove them. This renunciation is actually a promise in which we hold out our hand to Christ, so that He may guide us and reclothe us.

What these “garments” are that we take off, what the promise is that we make, becomes clear when we see in the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians what Paul calls “works of the flesh” – a term that refers precisely to the old garments that we remove. Paul designates them thus: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like” (Gal 5:19ff.). These are the garments that we remove: the garments of death.

Then, in the practice of the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the east – the symbol of light, the symbol of the newly rising sun of history, the symbol of Christ. The candidate for baptism determines the new direction of his life: faith in the Trinitarian God to whom he entrusts himself. Thus it is God who clothes us in the garment of light, the garment of life. Paul calls these new “garments” “fruits of the spirit”, and he describes them as follows: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22).

In the early Church, the candidate for baptism was then truly stripped of his garments. He descended into the baptismal font and was immersed three times – a symbol of death that expresses all the radicality of this removal and change of garments. His former death-bound life the candidate consigns to death with Christ, and he lets himself be drawn up by and with Christ into the new life that transforms him for eternity.

Then, emerging from the waters of baptism, the neophytes were clothed in the white garment, the garment of God’s light, and they received the lighted candle as a sign of the new life in the light that God himself had lit within them. They knew that they had received the medicine of immortality, which was fully realized at the moment of receiving Holy Communion. In this Sacrament, we receive the Body of the risen Lord and we ourselves are drawn into this Body, firmly held by the One who has conquered death and who carries us through death.

In the course of the centuries, the symbols were simplified, but the essential content of baptism has remained the same. It is no mere cleansing, still less is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death and resurrection, rebirth to new life.

Indeed, the cure for death does exist. Christ is the Tree of Life, once more within our reach. If we remain close to Him, then we have life. Hence, during this night of resurrection, with all our hearts we shall sing the Alleluia, the song of joy that has no need of words. Hence, Paul can say to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). Joy cannot be commanded. It can only be given. The risen Lord gives us joy: true life. We are already held forever in the love of the One to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given (cf. Mt 28:18).

In this way, confident of being heard, we make our own the Church’s Prayer over the Gifts from the liturgy of this night:

Accept the prayers and offerings of your people. With your help may this Easter mystery of our redemption bring to perfection the saving work you have begun in us.

Amen.
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