Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
Today, we celebrate the Easter, the conclusion of the passion and death of our Lord with his resurrection.
And indeed, when we meditate and think and reflect upon the Easter mystery,
we must always remember that it is a mystery that includes both the passion, the death, and the resurrection of our Lord.
And the passion and death is essential if we are to understand the resurrection.
For during the Lord's passion, we learn that there were many, indeed, every possible human emotion is covered
because many men from the fall of our first, from our first parents, Adam,
sought by their own vanity of their minds to find a philosophy by which mankind can find happiness.
And so, during the passion of our Lord, we see that one philosophy is contrasted
with the other philosophy of the Lord.
The impetuous is contrasted with the calculating.
The mirthful is contrasted with the melancholic.
The desponding contrasted with the hopeful.
The ones who treat life seriously and the ones who treat life lightly.
Nations are jealous of nations.
Trade rivaling trade.
Armies pitted against armies.
The ambitions of one.
Striving against the ambitions of another.
Yes, all humanity is confronted by the Lord in his passion.
And what does it show us?
It shows us that all the philosophies are men are none other than an exaltation of themselves
in which they try to impose their leaning upon other men.
And so, Christ needed to confront it.
And today, in the resurrection of our Lord,
we are confronted with the fickleness of human hearts, all human hearts.
For again, in the resurrection, all are present and none believe,
save the Blessed Virgin Mary and this day, Saint John, the beloved Apostle, but not at first.
At first, it is only the Blessed Virgin Mary who in the passion and death of our Lord
is sustaining for all humanity its faith.
For outside of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
there is no true belief in the resurrection
and how we are confronted with the fickleness of the human heart.
The Magdalene comes with others and none believe.
For they tell us that they needed to seek someone in order to remove the stone.
But the stone could not be removed by human hands
for the stone was not necessary to be removed
in order for the Savior to come forth from the tomb.
He would come forth from the tomb
as he came forth from the womb of his mother
and it would be removed by the power of God,
not by the power of men.
And so, this day, the fickleness of human hearts is laid to rest.
For this day, Jesus Christ truly shows himself to be victorious.
This day, this night, the power of Satan is crushed.
In order for us to understand that,
we must return to those times in which
the vigil mass points out to us,
to eons ago when Satan seemed to be absolutely
and completely victorious over the human heart
and over the human mind.
For he shattered that day in the fall of our first parents
the two most important images that mankind must be guided by.
In the fall of Adam, he shattered the image of fatherhood
and hence the love of God the Father.
In the fall of Eve, he shattered the image of motherhood
and hence the image that we were to look for,
the sign, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
All laid waste and indeed,
the love of God the Father seemed to have disappeared.
But in Moses' account of the creation,
we see precisely that.
For Saint John tells us,
God is love and if God is love,
then it is proper for a father to first build the home
in which his children would dwell in.
And at the pinnacle of that creation,
we see the incarnation already present.
For it does not depend on the fall of Adam
because as Saint Paul tells us,
he is the firstborn of all creation.
Without any change in God,
the mode of the incarnation has changed.
It has now become salvific.
But what we see is truly the fickleness of the human heart.
For it was not the prophecy of the Savior to come
that was enough to touch the earth.
God would become an infant
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
God would deliver his people from slavery to Pharaoh
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would deliver themselves when they thought themselves
absolutely on the brink of slaughter
by parting the Red Sea and destroying the power of Pharaoh
when the Red Sea would drown his army and his minions.
And it seemed not enough to touch the human heart.
He would feed the chosen people with manna from heaven,
untold tons and tons of food
provided without any human effort,
provided by the love of God.
And it was not enough to touch the human heart.
For we see immediately they begin to rebel
and yearn for the leeks and the onions of Egypt.
It was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would constantly deliver his chosen people
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would send forth prophets and patriarchs
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would come eventually as man incarnate
in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and there lie in a cave as a helpless infant
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
God would grow and teach his children
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
God would heal by miracles
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would protect the woman caught in adultery
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would cry at the death of his friend Lazarus
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
He would raise him from the dead
and it was not enough to touch the human heart.
All!
All he did seemed not enough to touch the human heart.
And so today, we reflect upon that mystery by which God has touched the human heart.
For St. Alphonsus, in explaining the passion of our Lord, gives to us the key to understanding.
For it was his suffering and his death in the flesh that would touch the human heart.
Indeed, it was the slaughter and the death of God that would give us life and give us hope.
St. Alphonsus tells us that when our Lord received the first strike on the cheek,
he suffered at that moment more physical pain than all the pain of humanity combined could ever suffer.
That when the first stripe was laid on that sacred humanity,
that pain began not to add up, but to increase.
By multiplication, so that it would reach its crescendo when he was crucified for the sake of man.
And yet, even that was not quite yet enough to touch the human heart.
For it was none of this that would cause the death of God, but it was his own willingness to die for us.
And so, he gave up his spirit by his own power, and that is the most profound act of love
St. Alphonsus tells us that when the first stripe was laid on that sacred humanity,
he suffered at that moment more physical pain than all the pain of humanity combined could ever suffer.
That would touch the human heart.
For our Lord would say,
I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men to myself.
And so, we see the complete pouring forth of the Son of God for our sake.
And yet, we do not reflect often enough on the mystery of his resurrection.
We must always and everywhere remember that if we are to declare ourselves to be a resurrection people,
we must understand the resurrection in the light,
in the light of revelation, and in the light of what Jesus Christ taught us.
For when Christ called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as he was often wont to do,
he implied that these holy patriarchs were still alive, not seen, but alive,
dead in the common sense of the word, as all men will experience death in the separation of soul from body.
And it is a true revelation.
And complete death.
But our Lord says that he is the God of the living and not of the dead.
And so, we know when we observe that a man lives, he is born and he matures.
He dies and his body decays.
We know no more about his body, save what we can see.
Colonel John Henry Newman points out a most profound truth that we must begin to understand in light of the resurrection,
he says, we have no direct cognizance of what we call the body, only its accidents.
And then he points out that Jesus seems to imply that there is a sense in which even the body never dies.
We do not deny the doctrine, for we know that we must all die, for it is appointed once for man to live and then to die.
He points out that we lose sight indeed of what we normally see.
But God sees the body.
He sees the elements of which our bodies were made.
And so, what is not seen by our senses is always and everywhere before the eyes of the Almighty.
And in that way, the body is said to continue to live.
For this very moment, he knows where all the dust of St. Maximilian's body is,
that body that was consumed in the fires of Auschwitz.
And one day, the Lord will gather it up.
As his disciples gathered up the pieces of flesh and the blood of his sacred humanity on the night of his passion.
But in a certain sense, in his resurrection, they were all taken from them.
For it was the same body with which Christ walked the earth that he rose.
And so, that is why we no longer have the pieces and the blood of the sacred body.
For they all rose from the dead.
And so,
it is that in the mind of God, even our bodies continue to live.
And at the end of time, he will gather up their remains, reorganize them and reconstitute them
as the same body with which we lived, but in a glorified state.
In order for us to understand this, then we must begin to understand
that there is another mystery that sometimes we divorce from the mystery of Christ's resurrection.
For our Lord tells us,
And so, Christ's visible presence amongst us had to disappear.
That is what he is trying to tell the Magdalene during the Easter mystery.
Martha, Mary, do not touch me, for you are too attached to my local presence.
And if we sought to keep the Lord here in his glory,
in his local presence,
then how could the Savior do what he came to do,
touch every human heart?
And so, he had to depart from this life in his visible presence
in order that he may establish that most profound presence
and that most profound act of love that the Son of God could have performed for humanity.
His unseen presence in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.
And in that,
we truly are confronted with the mystery of Christ.
with that mystery that in a certain sense even our body lives
because when we receive the Lord in his Eucharistic presence
we are in somehow in some way assumed into the very body of Christ
and so we will receive at the end of our days
the just recompense if we maintain that faith
and indeed we see that the Lord if he were still here in his local presence
could only touch those hearts in the place he was
but in the Eucharist he truly can touch each and every human heart
until the end of time for there is no contradiction in the blessed sacrament
it does not even take a miracle to explain how can the same Christ
the one Christ be present in every host
it is not a denial of the philosophical principle
by which a Christian can be a Christian
a thing cannot exist in the same way in the same time and in the same place
for each and every consecrated host is not a multiplication of the body of Christ
but it is the one body of Christ in a different place
and we can understand that if we can understand a simple principle
I when I raise my hand change my relationship
I'm in a different place to everything in this church
every movement we make is in a different place to everything in this church
we make changes the place we are in
and so each host dwells in a different place
and so it is the one Christ who dwells there in each host
and this is the mystery by which Christ transcends what restricts us all
our local presence
we cannot be in many places at one time
but the savior can be
and so it is that he will raise us up on the last day
and indeed
Our Lord would confirm this when after his crucifixion and death,
he would reunite some of the patriarchs and prophets of old to their bodies
in order that we may truly believe and truly hope that he has the power to do what he has promised.
For amongst those who were raised from the dead, many of the doctors and fathers tell us,
was Joseph, David, Moses, and many of the great patriarchs and prophets of old.
In the flesh, St. Matthew tells us, they were reunited with their bodies.
And in the resurrection of Christ, they would go into Jerusalem, he tells us,
and speak to those present, the same Moses, the same David, the same Joseph,
who had long since passed from this life and had experienced the death in the body.
And yet, their bodies in some sense still lived because Christ had reconstituted
them. St. Augustine tells us that if we persevere in our holy Catholic faith,
then there shall be nothing defective in the body. Those, for instance, who have been overburdened
with flesh shall not receive back all the mass of flesh. All that exceeds due proportion
shall be deemed superfluous. While on the other hand, all the ravages that sickness of old age
may have made, as for instance, leanness and thinness, shall be deemed superfluous.
The sickness of the body shall be repaired through Christ's divine power. Not only the shape,
he restores our bodies themselves, but with them, whatever may have been taken away
through the misfortunes of this life. And so, this day we reflect upon a most profound mysteries
that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit and not the synagogues of Satan.
And so, let us strive to use them as Christ wants us to use them, so that one day they may receive
the same gifts that the resurrected body of Christ showed forth. That is, impassibility that puts us
beyond the reach of all suffering in pain. Brightness by which the bodies of the just will
shine like the sun because they are endowed with the brightness of Christ. Agility by which we
are delivered from the heaviness that now presses down and oppresses our bodies subtlety that is
the body will be completely subject to the dominion of the soul and hence that is why we
will reign in heaven with the in glory with all the angels and saints and so if we are truly to
enter into the mystery of our resurrection we must enter into the mystery of Christ's passion
and death using as it were the flesh we have because to be human means to be a union of body
and soul it means to understand that Christ has delivered us from the oppression of Satan
and we no longer need to be the synagogues of Satan's because we are truly temples of the
Holy Spirit and so let us strive this day to understand fully as we can in this life
the mystery that Christ has risen and it is in that declaration that the power of Satan is
destroyed for he seemed at one time to have complete sway over humanity nothing God did
seemed to deliver his children from the oppression of Satan until he would do that most extraordinary
act of love giving his life up willingly for our sake so that we can declare to our enemy
and his enemies that we are truly human beings I would like to speak to you today in the presence
of Pastor Andrew Schubert as we go to the church in a moment I will be in the presence of Pastor
at all times and at all places,
when he tries to oppress us by his temptations and his trials and his tribulations.
Jesus Christ has risen, and hence you have been destroyed.
For all eternity, you will dwell in that abode
where all who did not love the Savior,
who did not love the Mother, will dwell.
And let us always remember that if we truly believe
in this mystery of the passion and death of our Lord,
then we come to understand that Christ and his most holy Mother
want to use us, body and soul, to be delivered up for the sake of sinners.
That is, the Mother of God at this moment
is working earnestly for the salvation of all souls,
and she desires to use every member of the mystification,
every physical body, to touch what seemed to be untouchable.
She would ask us all to be slaughtered
if in that slaughter she could claim that soul
furthest from her Son at this moment.
And then Christ would rise again in that soul.
And so let us always remember the power that we have.
But it does not come from us.
It does not come from human philosophies.
It comes from the philosophy,
of the Son of God, who is divine wisdom incarnate,
and his most holy Mother, who is the seat of that wisdom.
And so, it is the wisdom of the cross that destroys all human philosophies,
all human machinations, and draws mankind to that love
which God wishes to bestow upon us all for all eternity in the kingdom of his Father.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community