A SERMON FOR LOW SUNDAY
Today is the Octave Day of
Easter, a week since the Resurrection of Our Lord. We know this day by many other names: as Low Sunday, for example, to contrast it
with the “high holydays” of the Sacred Triduum and Easter itself. Or as Quasimodo Sunday, after the first word
of the Introit. A common name in Latin
is Dominica in Albis. The word “Albis” means white and refers to
the white robes of the newly baptized catechumens, who have been wearing these
“albs” during Easter week, and who today would finally put them aside after
receiving their First Holy Communion. In
the Eastern Church today is known as St. Thomas Sunday, after the story in the
Gospel of Doubting Thomas.
Whatever name we give to this
first Sunday after Easter, we are reminded of the continuation of the Easter
season beyond the octave itself. In our
churches, the lilies continue to adorn our altars, and white continues to be
the liturgical colour. The Alleluia, so
long suppressed during the time leading up to Easter, is now used more than
ever, with the Great Alleluia replacing the Gradual and Tract before the
Gospel. It is still a joyful time, and I
hope this joy is reflected in your sense of peace and tranquility, knowing that
the gates of heaven have been re-opened.
Our joy during this extended
period of Eastertide, however, can be nothing like the breath-taking joy
experienced by Our Lord’s disciples during that very first Easter week. In the Gospels of Easter week, we see example
after example of Our Lord’s apparitions to his apostles and disciples. One of the most moving of these of these
accounts is the story of St. Mary Magdalene, and the path she walked, from
anguish to mere worry, and then from panic to exultation.
Her anguish of course came when
she stood at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday, along with the Blessed
Mother and St. John. Poor Mary
Magdalene, who seemed to spend so much time at the feet of Our Lord. We remember her in the house of Simon the
leper, the Saturday before the Passion, when she broke the vase of precious
ointment, pouring it over the feet of Jesus, bathing those feet with her tears
and wiping them with her hair. Now we
meet her again at the foot of the Cross, unwilling to tear herself away. Her burning love for Our Lord makes her
indifferent to everything else. She
wants him and him alone, the rest doesn’t interest her.
On Easter Sunday she cannot keep
herself away from Our Lord, and returns early that morning to the
sepulcher. She immediately notices that
the stone has been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb, and she is
gripped by anxiety: “They have taken
away my Lord.” So strong is her fear of
not being able to find him, that she seems to become disoriented, and questions
everyone she meets, repeating the same questions: Who could have taken him? Where have they taken him? She tells it to St. Peter and St. John, who
come running to see for themselves. She
tells it to the Angels she finds at the tomb.
She tells it even to Jesus himself, when she mistakes him for a
gardener.
The other women, when they find
the sepulcher open, they go in to find out what has happened. But Mary Magdalene runs off to bring the news
to the Apostles. Then she returns. She comes back to the empty tomb. She isn’t really sure why, but she knows she
must remain close to the place where Our Lord’s body had been, that body she
wants to find at any cost.
She sees the Angels, but is so
consumed with grief at not finding Our Lord, that she doesn’t marvel, she doesn’t
even have room for fear in her heart, or any other emotion. And when the Angels ask her: “Woman, why weepest thou?” she has only one
answer: “Because they have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.”
Later, Jesus asks her the same question, and Mary, totally absorbed in
her own thoughts, doesn’t even recognize him, but “thinking that it was the
gardener”, she says to him: “Sir, if
thou hast taken him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take
him away.” The thought of finding Jesus
has now so occupied her mind, that in her panic she doesn’t even feel the need
of giving his name; it seems to her that all the world must be thinking of him
too, that everyone would immediately understand.
We think back on the Resurrection
as a joyful occasion, we who have the benefit of knowing the whole story. But imagine the worry, the panic even, of one
like Mary Magdalene, who loved so much (said Our Lord) that she was forgiven so
much. One who loved Our Lord with every
fiber in her body, where there was no longer any room for other loves in her
soul, or for other desires, or pre-occupations.
The movements of this soul were directed solely towards God, and through
all her other thoughts, words, and deeds, she did nothing but seek God alone.
How far removed is this from our
own state. How regrettable it is that
our own love of God is so lukewarm in comparison with this woman’s. How it must wound Our Lord, bitterly, when he
hears our poor excuses why we don’t desire to be holy, or at least to be
without sin, when we consider someone fanatical because they want to go to
daily Mass or receive Holy Communion as often as they can. And yet we make these excuses all the time. We’re too pre-occupied, too busy with other
“important” matters for intangible things like “Sacraments.”. As if anything could be as important as
God. As our salvation.
Keep this picture of yourself in
your mind. And then compare it with the
picture of Mary Magdalene dashing around in her panic to find Our Lord. How ashamed we should all feel at our lack of
true love for God, our lack of desire and enthusiasm to find Our Lord.
There is a story about a holy
monk who lived in Egypt. One day a young man came to visit him. The young man
asked: "Oh, holy man, I want to know how to find God." The monk was
muscular and burly. He said: "Do you really want to find God?" The
young man answered: "Oh, but I do."
So the monk took the young man
down to the river. Suddenly, the monk grabbed the young man by the neck and
held his head under water. At first the young man thought the monk was giving
him a special baptism. But when after two minutes the monk didn’t let go, the
young man began struggling. Still the monk wouldn’t release him. Second by
second, the young man fought harder and harder. After five and a half minutes,
the monk pulled the young man out of the water and said: "When you desire
God as much as you desired air, you will find God."
The key to finding God is simply
how much you desire to find him. St. Mary Magdalene, on that first Easter
morning, wanted desperately to find her Lord.
And when the man she thought was a gardener spoke to her, calling her by
her name, “Mary,” she finally recognized him, and fell once more at her
familiar place, at the feet of her master.
The Good Shepherd “calleth his own sheep by name, and the sheep follow
him because they know his voice”. When
Mary hears her name, she recognizes the Lord and cries out, “Master!”
At that moment she was perhaps
closer to God than she had ever felt before.
Her Lord was risen from the dead, he was truly God. And she must have reached out to clasp again
those feet over which she had so recently poured ointment and dried them with
her hair. But this time Our Lord pulled
away and said to her gently: “Noli me
tangere” – “Touch me not”. He is God,
the Most Highest, the Most Holy. There
is always an infinite distance between the Creator and his creature, between
the one who is, and the one who is not.
And the nearer the soul comes to God, the more it is made to realize (as
Mary Magdalene was so very gently reminded by Our Lord that first Easter
Sunday) that there is this infinite distance, and so is born in us a profound
sentiment of reverence for the supreme majesty of God.
Today Our Lord is asking us the
question he asked of St. Mary Magdalene.
“Whom seekest thou?” Can we reply
that we are seeking him alone? Look in
the mirror and ask yourself the question.
Could it possibly be that your answer is something like: “Well, yes, I’d like to find God, but if I
don’t I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”
How far removed is this from the desperation of St. Mary Magdalene, or the
young man with his face in the water gasping for air. He wanted to be a saint. But this wasn’t the answer he was looking
for. He thought the monk would tell him
to recite a list of prayers, or give his coat to some poor beggar, but
this? This desire to breathe so strong
he has no ability to think of anything else…
We are not entitled to heaven. We cannot be so simple-minded as to believe
that all God requires of us is to believe what happened in the Bible. We must take it a step further. He died on the Cross for us, not so that we
can just smile and say thank you, but so that we will learn by his example that
it is in a life of struggling against our fallen nature, struggling to carry
all our heavy pains and sufferings (our
crosses), struggling to practice virtue in the face of the persecution and
mockery of others, and in the face of the lukewarm and selfish appetites of our
own poor flesh, it is only in all this that we may learn to find our risen
Lord. And we never quite get there,
there is always that infinite distance between us and him. But if we desire it, we will do what it
takes. We will struggle. And we will persevere until we find him. And how great will then be our joy when our
loving Shepherd calls us by our name, and we can finally lie down at his feet
for ever.
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