Eastertide 6th Sunday Eusebius of Caesarea

Caldey sea scape, Chapel

 Patristic Lectionary.......

... Anoint the lintel of our mind with the blood of the Lamb who was sacrificed for us  ... 

SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER Year II 

SUNDAY

First Reading      Acts 24:25-25:27 (or 24:25; 25:6-27)

Responsory      Lk 21:12-13; Mk 13:9

They will lay hands on you and persecute you. You will be taken be­fore synagogues and put in prison for my name's sake. + That will be your chance to bear witness, alleluia.

V. They will hand you over to the courts; you will stand before gov­ernors and kings on my account.+ That will be ...  

Second Reading

From the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea
(Treatise on the Paschal Solemnity 7.9.10-12: PG24 , 701-706)   

Sunday Eucharist

In the time of Moses the paschal lamb was sacrificed only once a year, on the fourteenth day of the first month toward evening, but we of the new covenant celebrate our Passover every week on the Lord's day. We are continually being filled with the body of the Saviour and sharing in the blood of the Lamb. Daily we gird ourselves with chastity and prepare, staff in hand, to follow the path of the gospel. Leaning on the rod that came forth from the root of Jesse, we are always departing from Egypt in search of the solitude of the desert. We are constantly setting out on our journey to God and celebrating the Passover. The gospel would have us do these things not only once a year but daily.

We hold our Eucharistic celebration every week on the day of our Lord and Saviour, for this is our paschal feast, the feast of the true Lamb who redeemed us. We do not circumcise the body with a knife, but with the sharp edge of the word of God we cut away all evil from our souls. We use no unleavened bread, except for that of sincerity and truth. Grace has freed us from outworn Jewish customs and created us anew in the image of God. It has given us a new law, a new circumcision, a new Passover, and made us Jews inwardly, thus releasing us from our former bondage.

On the fifth day of the week, while having supper with his disciples, the Saviour said to them: With all my heart I have longed to eat this Passover with you. It was not the old Jewish Passover that he desired to share with his disciples, but the new Passover of the new covenant that he was giving to them, and that many prophets and upright people before him had longed to see. He proclaimed his desire for the new Passover which he, the Word himself, in his infinite thirst for the salvation of the whole human race, was establishing as a feast to be celebrated by all peoples everywhere. The Passover of Moses was not for all peoples, indeed it could not be, because the law allowed it to be celebrated only in Jerusalem. Christ's desire, then, must have been not for that old Passover, but for the saving mystery of the new covenant which was for everyone.

And so we too should eat this Passover with Christ. We should cleanse our minds of all the leaven of evil and wickedness and be filled with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, becoming Jews inwardly, in our souls, where the true circumcision takes place. We should anoint the lintel of our mind with the blood of the Lamb who was sacrificed for us, and so ward off our destroyer. We should do this not only once a year, but every week, continually.

On the day before the Sabbath we fast in memory of our Saviour's passion, as the apostles were the first to do when the bridegroom was taken from them. On the Lord's day we receive life from the sacred body of our saving Passover and our souls are sealed with his precious blood.

Responsory      1 Cor 5:7-8; Heb 10:10

Christ has become our paschal sacrifice. + Let us therefore celebrate the feast not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, alleluia.

V. We have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all. + Let us therefore ...  

Easter Tuesday Saint John 20:11-18. Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb...

COMMENT:  

Easter Tuesday 2014. 

The ‘Daily Gospel’, for this day, happens to introduce again with St. Gregory Palamas.

This Reference is also very useful.

A question remains about the Apocryphal Gospel of Gamaliel ... ?

Saint John 20:11-18.

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb...

Commentary of the day : 

Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), monk, Bishop and theologian 

Homily 20, on the eight morning gospels according to Saint John ; PG 151, 265 

"Go to my brothers"

Outside darkness still reigned; it was not yet day; yet that cave was full of the light of the resurrection. Mary saw this light through God's grace: her love for Christ had been quickened and she had the strength to see the angels... Then they said to her: “Woman, why are you weeping? What you are seeing in this cave is heaven, or rather a heavenly temple in place of a tomb dug out to be a prison... Why are you weeping?”... 

Outside, day is still unclear and the Lord does not make that divine brightness appear which would have made him known at the heart of suffering. So Mary did not recognize him... When he spoke and allowed himself to be recognized..., even then, as she saw him alive, she had no idea of his divine greatness but addressed him as a mere man of God... In the upsurge of her heart she now wants to throw her arms round his knees, to touch his feet. But he said to her: “Do not touch me... for the body with which I am now clothed is lighter and more mobile than fire; it is able to rise up to heaven and even to my Father's side in the heights of heaven. I have not yet risen to my Father because I have not as yet shown myself to my disciples. Go and find them; they are my brothers for we are all children of one Father” (cf. Gal 3,26)... 

The church in which we stand is the symbol of that cave. Indeed, it is more than a symbol: it is, as it were, another Sepulchre. It is there we find the place where the Lord's body has been laid, the holy table. So whoever runs with all their heart towards this divine tomb, God's true dwelling... will there learn the words of the inspired writings that will instruct him, like the angels, about the divinity and humanity of the Word of God incarnate. And thus he will see the Lord himself, without any possibility of error... For whoever looks with faith on the mystic table and the bread of life laid on it will see in its reality the Word of God who was made flesh for us and made his dwelling amongst us (Jn 1,14). And if he proves himself worthy of receiving it, he will not only see but will share in its being; he will take it into himself that he may remain there.

Easter Greetings

Salvator Mundi - da Vinci

Christ is Risen

Alleluia

May the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,

who is the image of God.

shine into our hearts

to enlighten them with

the knowledge of God's glory,

the glory on the face of Christ

(cf 2 Corinthians 4:4,6)

Quiet Easter Day gives us reflection on the poem of William, below.

After the activities of Easter Vigil and Sunday Morning the time gives us to plumb the thoughts of these lines.

The addled brain slows down, and slow motion gains to newer of slowing to presence, - of 'The Ground of Love' you express.

Thank you, William.

The Ground of Love

On our journey in the footsteps of Our Lord we forget how often we have delayed in following Him, whilst we searched along a path of our own imagining. It is only when we approach the darkness of Calvary that we become aware of our separation from Him, and realize the depth of His love for us as we kneel beneath the Cross upon the ground of love,

+

I love to kneel upon the ground beneath Your wounded feet
My days long spent in searching for the God who lies hidden,
Only here at my journey's end do I find Your living presence
Concealed in the darkness within the inmost being of my soul

I have stumbled along uncertain ways crying after
You Imagining You to have always been too far ahead of me,
Out of reach to all but Your most familiar disciples
On the other side of the ridge beyond the one facing me

Your footsteps I have traced across the uneven ground
Marking out a path of faith that I have tried to follow,
But coming upon the darkness of the place of crucifixion
It must surely be too late for me to tell You of my love

For only now do J realize how You feared for my delay
Until this final hour of life to find my way to You, and yet
From deep within my being my soul is caught up in Your cry
As my tears fall beneath the Cross upon the ground of love

St. John of the Cross - Spiritual Canticle
When have you hidden Yourself,

and abandoned me in my groaning, 0 my Beloved?

St. John of the Cross's own commentary on "Where have you hidden Yourself?"

It is as if the soul said, "Show me the place where You are hidden". It is as if as the revelation of the divine Essence; for the place where the Son a/God is hidden is, according to St.. John, "the bosom of the Father," (John 1: 18), which Is the divine Essence, transcending all mortal vision, and hidden from all human understanding, as Isaiah says, speaking to God, "Verily You are a hidden God." (Isaiah 45:15) ... The Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and in presence, in the inmost being of the soul.

Note: the 'ground of love • here signifies the centre of divine revelation within man

Easter Sunday Homily - Fr. Raymond

Cross and Passion - Anne Marie M..

---- Forwarded Message -----
From: Anne Marie ....
Sent: Saturday, 7 April 2012, 10:38
Subject: Cross and passion

Just to show that you can have a spiritual moment with an IPad, but there is no app for that.
Anne Marie
Sent from my iPad

+ + +

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Raymond . . .
Sent: Sunday, 8 April 2012, 12:22
Subject: Easter Sunday Homily

APOSTLES CREED

• One of the riches of the new Easter Liturgy is that it brings back to common Liturgical use the short, simple Apostles Creed.  This Creed is now prescribed for use during Lent and Easter.  For the rest of the year we have the much more elaborate, the much more theologically developed,   Nicene Creed.  The Nicene Creed was formulated many years later than the Apostles’ Creed, and it only took final shape after a great deal of theological controversy.  But one strange thing about this new Creed is that it omits one very significant article of faith, an article that we still find in the Apostles Creed.  This article is explicitly mentioned in the New Testament too by St Peter.  It’s the article that proclaims Christ’s “descent into Hell”.  (We generally understand this word “Hell” here, of course, as referring, not to the hell of “damnation”, but to what might be called a place or state of being in which the souls of the just, who died before Christ were kept waiting till He had opened the gates of  Paradise. )
• Why this article should be omitted in the new Nicene Creed, I couldn’t say, but what is certain is that it is to be found there in the primitive Apostles Creed and it is missing from the later Nicene Creed.  Was it perhaps because it is too  esoteric, too mysterious a concept to put into such a basic proclamation of faith for everybody,  even the newest catechumens?  Or was it because the Bishops of Nicea  weren’t yet too clear on its meaning themselves?  After all, the Church is still to this day seeking an ever deeper understanding of the mysteries of revelation.  The words of Jesus to his Apostles about the church’s need to grow in understanding are, in a way, still relevant to this very day: “I still have much to say to you, but you cannot bear it yet”.  The development of  dogma is an ongoing part of the life of the Church.
• This Easter morning let us try to approach the understanding of Christ’s descent into hell and its implications for his resurrection by considering first the fact that when Christ came to save his brothers and sisters in the flesh, it was most appropriate that he came down to live among them as one of themselves in order to do so.  but, of course, it was not just to those actually living in Palestine at that time that he came, he had, in some way, to came to all of us, to all mankind, past, as well as the present and the future.  To his own contemporaries, the present He came, as a historical reality.  To us, who are the future, he comes through the Scriptures and through the Sacraments.  But how did he come to the past, to those who had died before him; to those who had died before his Ascension, before he had reopened the gates of heaven for us?
• This is where that mysterious gap of three days between the death of Christ and his reappearance begins to have meaning;  that mysterious gap described as the time when “He descended into hell”.  We might be so bold as to call this event the Epiphany to the dead.  At the Bethlehem Epiphany there had been repre-sented the poor and the simple, and the Rich and the wise, but in this event he  is manifested also to the dead.
• By the fact that he not only descended among the dead but also that he spent time there, he stayed three days there, we are surely led to believe that he shared their life with them there, whatever that means, he shared in their darkness and painful exclusion from the full fruits of redemption, that redemption that could only be realised by his own resurrection and  ascension.  The Fathers of the Church, when commenting on these three days, seem to suggest that these three days were the final part of Christ’s sharing in the suffering of his people,  not only of his people who were alive at his coming, but also of the dead, because to him all men are alive.
• Thus, to sum up: The darkness and pain of Christ’s sharing in our sufferings on earth accomplish our deliverance so also his sharing in the darkness and pain of his brethren’s seemingly endless waiting in their Limbo accomplishes  their deliverance.  And both events throw into greater relief the glory and triumph of his Resurrection;  That Christ rose from the tomb is perhaps not quite accurate a statement.  He descended from the tomb.  When he rose three days later, it was not from the tomb, but from the dead, from the mouth of hell.  Christ burst the gates of death then, not from the outside, as he did with Lazarus when he called out “Lazarus come forth”;  but he burst the gates of death from the inside and led out that great multitude of captives with the cry to his heavenly Father: “Behold I and the Brethren thou hast given”

Risen Lord Salvator Mundi - Leonardo da Vinci

Salvator Mundi Leonardo da Vinci, rediscovered, retored 2012

+ + +

To William,
Thank you for the Holy Week greetings.

And now we celebrate the Resurrection.

You rejoice in the glorious Salvator Mundi image by da Vinci rediscovered.

Your account of the art event is described so exciting and alive.

Wishing you the joy of the Risen Lord.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the Beginning and the Ens.
                                  Revelation 21:6.

Yours ...

Donald

--- Forwarded Message -----
From: William Wardle ...
Sent: Thursday, 29 March 2012, 17:13
Subject: Holy Week greetings mailed

Dear Fathers,

I have today posted my Easter cards to you and all the Brethren to unite with you all at the start of Holy Week, but I thought I would write (always afraid that the post might be delayed) to send the photo 'image' [which fascinates me] that I have used on the cards I made, in case you might like to have an 'onine copy' for enlargement or for sharing on the Blog. A significant factor in my choice of this painting for the card was that it will not be illustrated in the books in your library, and thus I am able to present an image for your interest that you might perhaps otherwise not have the opportunity to consider? When I had the photos printed, the lady hesitated for a very long time with the prints in her hand:"It makes my spine tingle", was all she managed to say as she handed them to me. I gave her one of the prints, and left her speechless.

It is entitled Salvator Mundi and is the recently discovered work of Leonardo da Vinci that was lost and only rediscovered and restored in 2011. In France, Leonardo da Vinci painted the subject, Jesus Christ, for Louis XII of France between 1506 and 1513. The recently authenticated work was once owned by King Charles I and recorded in his art collection in 1649 before being auctioned by the son of the Duke of Buckingham in 1763. It next appeared in 1900, damaged from previous restoration attempts and its authorship unclear, when it was purchased by a British collector, Sir Frederick Cook. Cook's descendants sold it at auction in 1958 for £45. The painting was rediscovered, acquired by an American consortium of art dealers in 2005, and authenticated as by Leonardo. It was exhibited by London's National Gallery during 2011. The recent restoration of this picture has revealed many of Leonardo’s characteristic working methods. The hands, which are the best preserved, were readjusted during painting. The face, more damaged, was built up with numerous fine layers of paint. Christ holds a rock crystal orb, which represents the universe. In Leonardo’s day rock crystal (a clear quartz) was considered a miraculous material and no modern tools could shape it, let alone fashion it into a perfect geometric solid.

I would just remark that I too am drawn to the apophatic approach to theology, but I do delight in iconography, and this painting seems to me to be very like to an icon? It is on the Son of Man that my thoughts focus when looking at this image, and then rise up through the iconography present in the painting, through his role as the Son of God to his transformed existence where my thoughts lose themselves. Perhaps this is the journey I relate in my 'jotting' for this holy season...

I attach a copy of my Holy Week / Easter 'jotting' (no one might imagine the emotional and spiritual cost to me of this poem which haunted me from its conception and tore at me until I could ‘adequately’ give it expression). It was whilst I was endeavouring to assure my understanding of the meaning to me of the word ‘ground’, initially from Eckhart’s use of the word, that I alighted on the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross on the internet (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/Spirituality.php), which I had never previously ‘explored’. His commentary on the first stanza particularly captivated me and enlightened my thoughts in the first verse of my reflection. I quote from his work in the footnote.

I pray for you all as I unite with 'the brothers from whom I am absent' at every Office, and will be doing so especially during Holy Week, and into your Easter celebrations. Health being sufficient, both for Edith (who has had a rough patch recently) and myself, I very much hope to be writing during May to ask if I may come to stay in June.

With my especial greetings as this holy season opens,

with my love in Our Lord,

William