AND HE HID HIMSELF

A SERMON FOR PASSION SUNDAY

Today we walked into the church and, as we saw all our holy statues and images covered in their funereal drapes of purple, we remembered that it is Passion Sunday.  The last couple of sentences of the Gospel provide the reason why our statues are hidden from us today: our Lord admits his own divinity (“Before Abraham was, I am”), and the Jews pick up stones to cast at him for his supposed blasphemy.  “But Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple.”  Today, to represent our Lord’s absence from the temple, we have our purple-draped statues and crucifix.  We are deprived of the consolation of beholding our Saviour’s sacred image.  Jesus is once more hiding himself.

The chosen people were about to stone to death their Creator.  It’s an incongruous concept that we have a hard time getting our head around.  But we cannot and must never forget that it was for our sins that he suffered these humiliations, and for our sins that we must now repent as we enter into the last two weeks of Lent, the holy season of Passiontide.

Life often throws stones at us too.  We live our humble little lives, hopefully trying our best to please God and remain in his grace.  And then, suddenly, pow! a tragedy occurs, and we find ourselves overwhelmed in the depths of woe.  The God we have been faithfully praying to seems suddenly to be hidden from us, and we struggle to find the consolation of his presence.  We must remember that even though we feel we have done nothing to deserve our cross, in reality we surely merit suffering far far more than our divine Saviour, who first suffered for us.  “Take up your cross and follow me,” he told us, but when he tries to pass us our cross, how willing are we to take it from his hands?  If life throws stones at us, remember that the Jews picked up stones to throw at Christ first.

Today and for the next two weeks, the image of God is hidden from us under these drapes.  This does not mean that God is not here.  Why did he hide himself?  Obviously, not out of cowardice—when the time came, he told Judas where to find him, and then patiently waited in the Garden of Gethsemane for the soldiers to come and take him prisoner.  But not yet.  He hid himself because his time had not yet come.

What was he waiting for?  What would be the “right time?”  He was waiting for the feast of Passover, when the Jewish people would sacrifice their Paschal Lamb in the temple at the same hour that he would be crucified.  The veil of the temple would be torn asunder at that same moment, and the Hebrew people, indeed, all people, would be freed from slavery, not the slavery of Egypt this time, but the slavery of sin.  It was God’s plan all along that the greatest moment of human history, the sacrifice of the Son of God, would take place on this momentous anniversary of the Passover.

There is another reason his time had not yet come.  There was something else he had to do before he died.  He must institute the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at the Last Supper, and only then would he be ready to accept the far greater sufferings that lay in wait for him.  The Last Supper made it possible for Christ to leave us with several essential sources of grace after his death.  First his own Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist would abide with us, forever hidden under the species of bread and wine, and yet really, truly present in the same way that he dwelt among us even then.  Secondly, the Precious Blood spilled during his Passion and Death would not be drained dry at this single historical event, but would continue to pour forth in the infinite graces that come to us through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perpetual continuation of Christ’s bloody sacrifice on Calvary.  Thirdly, the Blessed Sacrament that is the fruit of the Mass is received by us, his people, as a sacrament.  As a sacrament it is an outward sign of hidden grace.  Again, the Godhead is hidden from us, and yet the graces we receive are very real.

Finally, the Last Supper was the occasion for ordaining his apostles as priests of the new and everlasting covenant, priests who would continue until the end of time to administer the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist, and the other six sacraments that surround it, to the faithful members of the Mystical Body, the Church.  We Christians accept all these hidden graces that come to us from these priests, validly ordained, taking their Holy Orders from a direct line of succession to the very apostles who attended the Last Supper.

Our lesson today is that although God may be hidden from us today, he is no more hidden from us than he always is, but the reality of his presence never leaves us.  No one has ever really seen God.  He appeared to Moses in a burning bush.  He was hidden in the womb of the Blessed Mother.  Even during his lifetime on earth, his divinity was hidden from us under his human form.  Since his Ascension into heaven, he has been hidden under the species of bread and wine in the tabernacles of our churches, hidden in the infinite graces he pours upon us.  Today, he hides his image from us under the purple drapes, and on Good Friday, ultimately, he will be totally hidden. Good Friday is the only day of the year on which Mass is not said, and when even Holy Communion is hidden from us. 

These liturgical days of darkness are our reminder too that in the course of our own lives, we will experience such darkness, maybe even the sense of abandonment by God.  But we are not to lose faith.  It’s why three of the apostles, just before Christ’s Passion and Death, were given a glimpse of him in all his glory at the Transfiguration.  Just as surely, if we remain faithful, we will one day see God, “face to face” and he will be hidden from us no longer.  In the midst of our tragedies, our crosses, and our own humble sorrows, let us never forget that after our Lord’s Passion and Death came the Resurrection.  If we accept our crosses as he accepted his, we will follow him not only in our sufferings, but soon too in the resurrection of the body, and the life of the world to come.