The Paschal Mystery is the most important talk of the weekend. Not because I am giving it of course, (more on humility later) but because, well, it just is!

If God saves mankind by an act of Salvation, whatever else we are going to talk about is important, but it’s going to hang off that the main event. God was giving his own Son to us to save our souls for eternity.

Before we get into the details, which by the way covered in a popular set of books you will find around here called the Bible; let us talk about eternity.

The word eternity is used in many ways, for example, when it Mike going to finish this waffling introduction, it is taking an eternity!

My attempt at humor … well they are attempts. -;) I can rely on Frank to laugh at my jokes.

But for the most part we use it to describe something that is taking so long we cannot imagine it ever ending … well guess what. That’s the point. It is never ending!

However, there is one consistent theme in all of this. If you take a look at the timeline attached to the handout, it’s pretty clear.

But just for fun, let’s go into more detail. Now that we have established that God is behind all of this.

So we often think about the Word being Eternal, but now you know why, because it is eternal. Was always there, but now is communicated to us in the Bible and the works of Jesus’s mission and in those of his people.

Before time began, there were ALWAYS the three persons of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is eternal, so our own concept of time is irrelevant.

God the Father was always there, so was God the Son, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

All of this preplanned by God, by God the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, God the Son in the New Testament and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity.

It is this mystery that we will explore this morning. The Paschal Mystery. The beauty and wonder of our salvation.

Let’s start with Creation. God creates man in a world filled with the animals and plants; the man’s name is Adam who becomes aware that he is unique, completely different from everything else in the visible world.

He is not something, but a someone, with the capacity to know and love and thus to know God. Adam is aware of being a self, a person who transcends the rest of creation and capable of relating to the Creator. God himself.

This “self” or “me” is our call to an interior life, one where we are capable of hearing God and responding to Him. This weekend is all about both of those issues. In fact, it is our purpose in life. To hear and to respond.

As Adam was alone he encountered solitude and felt a longing for a partner, another human to enjoy the journey with him. God provided a partner that would fulfill the deepest purpose of his life. That is to love. To complete the destiny of humanity; love  is the foundation of mankind as we know it. He made his most beautiful creation. Woman. (Not just saying that because Sally is present).

Man needs woman and woman needs man. Both need love to survive and flourish in the garden. We are all the product of such a union.

Man and woman were created in the image of God and given the ability to create life through the gift of sexuality. Things were perfect in the life of Adam and Eve. In order to understand things better in my life, I have taken to writing poetry, when I cannot describe something in many words; I try to use fewer. So sprinkled through this talk, I will pause to give you a view of what this story has meant to me at a certain time and mostly tied into scripture. Here is my view of what an evening might have been like in that idyllic place we know as the Garden of Eden. Imagine Adam in the garden at the cool evening of the day.

Some of these are on the handout if you want to follow along.

 

A Walk in the Evening

Man walked gently in the garden

            During the breeze of the evening

            All was well in his paradise,

            And he loved the plants and the creatures.

Then a light wind kissed his face goodnight.

 

“tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.”

Book of Deuteronomy

 

As we admire the nature of the world that God has created for us, we can also wonder about the life forms that surround us. Just as we ebb and flow during the course of our day, so goes nature.

THE FALL

The place just described, Eden … can only be imagined.  With such a perfect paradise in place, you might wonder why God gave man and woman the opportunity to break his command not to eat of the tree of “knowledge of Good and Evil”.

Simply put, the capacity of man and woman to love God only works if we have freedom. That freedom means freewill and the ability to make choices.

 

As we all know, Adam and Eve took the bait from Satan and established a difficult world in which to live. In a single act of “selfishness” they created what we now know as original sin. Many of the gifts that were given to them in terms of love now had a new dimension.

The dimension of sin and a desire to use and claim objects (including people) for our own gratification. In the case of sexual desire; creating a battlefield between love and lust. For possessions, ownership; for food, gluttony, the list goes on.

Our uninterrupted fellowship with God, was now broken, as Adam hid in the bushes of the garden hoping he would not be found. There is much of humanity hiding from God ever since, though God remains totally available to us.

Man and woman became selfish, not selfless. Aware of sin now, of Good and Evil, the struggle becomes ours to wrestle with daily. We still have the choice, but can be tempted continuously by “the other guy”. The concept of the “false self” where I am the God in my own world was born.

 

 

A couple of poems for us to consider. This one when bad thoughts come to my mind.

The Garden of Weeding

Today is a good day for weeding,

            Wow, where did those thoughts come from,

            and how did I start doing this again,

            and who planted that one, I thought it was dead.

When the weeds start to flower, they will choke off the beauty in my garden.

“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.” Gospel of Matthew

 

Usually, if not always sin starts with a thought, that thought becomes a desire and eventually a passion that we take action on. If it is a bad thought, it can lead to sin and selfishness, if it’s a good one, leads to virtue and some good action or Word.

Recognizing these thoughts is one way we can start to see the cause and effect of this on our self, our conscience, our morals, our character, how others perceive us, how we really are. We can reveal our “false self” the one serving the snake in the Garden.

Worse than just the knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden, we are trying to become our own Gods, controlling our own lives, where actions are focused on self-pleasure, our concepts of controlling our lives.

A life of denial and fooling ourselves into believing in ourselves, and by doing so denying the existence and presence of God. However, through grace, this is not a permanent state, and we have the opportunity to evaluate how we react or deal with situations.

Here is a suggestive poem for when that happens.

Add Ten Seconds

Add ten seconds to each moment,

And my response would be better,

kinder, warmer, more forgiving,

than my first.

But can I ever be as loving as He is to me?          

 

“Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”

Gospel of Matthew

 

 

The sacrifice

God loves us so much, and is so distressed by the potential of us making our own poor choices that lead to separation from Him, that he decided to make a sacrifice.

A sacrifice beyond words or description, one that would, once again, place us in a position to be redeemed.

To enjoy His glorious presence in eternal life.

God could have picked many ways to save us, but having given us freedom to choose between good and bad, to love Him and others, or ourselves alone, he picked the most beautiful and perfect way.

It started by selecting one woman, a woman with freewill to become our new Eve. The virgin Mary was born without original sin, (the Immaculate Conception).

Mary was to set an example to us all by her amazing humility and love in accepting the call.

By providing the means for God to become incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ, she provided the way for us all to become reborn again in Christ’s love. She also shows us the way of humility and love of God when asked to do this seemingly impossible mission.  “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, let it be done according to thy will”

Imagine Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth, who through the power of the Holy Spirit is informed of Mary’s condition and the precious cargo she is carrying in her womb.

 

The cousin

Greeting a cousin from the hill country,

            She gave the news

            that would change the world,

            and her cousin knew why

and she blessed her.

 

“Blessed are you among women”

Gospel of Luke

 

Jesus did not seem to live the life of someone who we might have thought would be God. That all powerful and mighty God of the Old Testament, who seemed to be showing his arm in battles against those opposing his people. Or was that the case?

Jesus spent 30 years (aside from the wedding feast at Cana), living a humble life, obedient to his parents, learning the trade of a carpenter. What was he telling us during all those years; after all they represented 90% of the time that he spent here on earth with us.

Obedience, humility, love, family, devotion, acceptance, fortitude and much more. He lived much of that part of his life without crisis. Moving through the world like the son of a Jewish woman and his carpenter father. We can imagine this life with Jesus sitting on his mother’s knees as she teaches him Jewish scripture, working in his father’s workshop, fetching tools and learning how to make furniture. Working with his hands, learning to use his mind.

What is striking about this time period, is we rarely reflect on how much he loved us to go through all of this time, with the knowledge of what was to come.

Then, at 30 years of age, the mission started. The teaching began, the miracles, the traveling and the formation of the basis of the new Church and the New Testament.

Jesus was our role model for the New Covenant. The savior had arrived, and was accepted by his disciples and followers, but ultimately rejected by his chosen people.

Was this a mistake? I don’t think so, Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died as one. The tradition of God the Father of the Jewish Scriptures was completely fulfilled by his mission. The message and gift to us of salvation was perfectly given to us by his suffering and persecution and making that final offering of his life to us on Calvary.

That selfless torture he endured to show us how we needed to be selfless ourselves. He gave it all up to his own Father right to the very end. Showing us, not just in words, but in actions.

This action saved our souls for eternity, by redeeming all the sins of the world, past and present, paving the way for us to follow Him, and made a very clear invitational call.

Come follow me.

This call is lived out in some many ways in the world every day; it’s hard to understand why others cannot see God working in their lives. His presence is permanent in all lives, but recognizing that presence is not always easy until we become as He was.

The purest example of the Suffering Servant.  Here are a couple of examples of poems that speak to this issue.

The first one is about getting ready to replace that old self, clean out the cupboard of all the junk, the false stuff and become humble and real.

Take off the New Clothes

I take off those old, brand new clothes,

Which will be paid off next year, perhaps,

and remove them completely, replacing them,

with clothes from the thrift store.

So I can live humbly in His presence and Peace.

 

“put on the new self”

Colossians

Sometimes sacrifices are so big they become events and guideposts that we can only aspire to. Heroes and Saints are often unsung. There are many of them that sometimes use words that have meaning beyond the initial intention. Such is the following.

I have a particular soft spot for these unsung heros, so if I lose it on this one, I apologize in advance.

The following poem is a code-breaking poem from the life of Violette Szabo.

She was a spy for Allied forces in WW2 who after being caught, tortured and sexually assaulted, was executed at Ravensbruk Concentration Camp at age 23. She was awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre for her sacrifice.

A picture of Violette is on the hand out. She had signed up for special operations duty after her husband, a French officer had been killed in action. He was awarded the Croix De Guerre, the highest military honor France awards.

 

The life that I have

Is all that I have

And the life that I have

Is yours.

 

The love that I have

Of the life that I have

Is yours and yours and yours.

 

A sleep I shall have

A rest I shall have

Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years

In the long green grass

Will be yours and yours and yours.

 

Our reward and Our Call

The reward we have in front of us is beyond comprehension. We are offered complete freedom and grace, no matter how we may be limited in our lives, by physical, emotional or other restraints. There are no restraints that can hold back the tide of his immense love.

To ensure that we feel and understand the power of this love, the gift of grace through the Holy Spirit is available freely to all who want it. All we have to do is ask.

However, asking needs to take more of the form of receiving the invitation to His Call. He is waiting in his house for you, he wants to enter your heart and “rest in me” forever more.

This desire is everlasting, and the peace you will receive from it is also everlasting; even though you may not feel it every day when someone shoves you in the chow line.

It’s about our response to God’s invitation that counts. The following poem shows one way of responding. It is a poem of surrender to his love.

 

 

 

Faltering Steps

Faltering steps with bare feet,

Slip from one moss covered rock, to another.

Each move wobbly, tentative and unsure.

 

Until finally I falter, falling deep into the river,

Submerged, surrounded by His love,

an inner resurrection raising me to the surface.

I only see sky and feel water of everlasting life,

touching all body, soul searing upwards,

delighting in the sun and light radiating into me.

 

Like a log fire on a cold winter night,

I AM warm, secure, in His nature’s hands

Drifting down towards an eternal sea of love.

 

So the surrender of my “false self” to Jesus to replace it with the “true self” aligned to his love and the communion I want to feel with Him is what the Paschal Mystery is all about. God gave us everything we need to make this happen, but like the disciples, we are often slow learners.

That revelation was to come later for them, even after the resurrection, the disciples were still basically scared for their own lives, and it wasn’t until Pentecost, and the arrival of the Holy Spirit in the Upper room that they truly had “knowledge and understanding” of God and his plan for their lives.

Now, however, we do have the Holy Spirit with us today and evermore. For me this poem says a lot of how I feel about the Holy Spirit today.

 

Eternal Kindling

Can fire be separated from its source?

Does energy released and absorbed just fade away,

or remain an eternal memory,

longer than the flame, or the heat, or the warmth of the log that bore it.

Leaving a timeless kindling lit in my soul. The recollection that warms forever.

“Go up into the hill country; bring timber, and build the house” 1 Haggai

Today we are presented with the refuge that is Jesus Christ. We have this opportunity to be a part of this fire of everlasting love that will melt any heart, proclaim his boundless love, enrich our life, save our soul.

You will hear the saying “dying to self” a lot this morning. What it means can be confusing; it confused me when I first heard it.

What it means is letting God come first, not in your head, but in your heart. Not just because “it’s a good deal”, but because it is the only REAL deal.

He wants us all to give up that “false self” the one that thinks only of us and not of others. Not to just talk the talk when we are in a prayer service, or celebrating the Eucharist. Not to be proud about how “holy” we are like the Pharisees in the Gospel, but to be authentic, to be real. Let’s spend a few minutes reflecting on how we think how God might be inviting us to his house, to his refuge on this weekend. We may hear that murmur, a whisper, perhaps through others. Let’s give that gift of “true self” to God and to others.

 

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 1:17-18