From: The Sign of Jonas [Thomas Merton], pgs. 297-298 – Easter Sunday, 1950
“The grace of Easter is a great silence, an immense tranquility and a clean taste in your soul. It is the taste of heaven, but not the heaven of some wild exaltation. The Easter vision is not riot and drunkenness of spirit but a discovery of order above all order – a discovery of God and of all things in Him. This is a wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison hidden in it. It is life without death….
If Mass could only be, every morning, what it is on Easter morning! If the prayers could always be so clear, if the Risen Christ would always shine in my heart and all around me and before me in His Easter simplicity! For His simplicity is our feast, this is the unleavened bread which is manna and the bread of heaven, this Easter cleanness, this freedom, this sincerity. O my God, what can I do to convince You that I long for Your Truth and Your simplicity, to share in Your infinite sincerity which is the mirror of Your True Being, and is Your Second Person! Only the little ones can see Him. He is too simple for any created intelligence to fathom. Sometimes we taste some reflection splashed from the clean Light that is the Life of all things: Baptism, First Mass; Easter morning. Give us always this bread of heaven. Slake us always with this water that we may not thirst forever.”
The Crucifixion (by Georges Rouault, French Impressionist, 1871-1958)
In English
In French
Seigneur tu me cherches
Tu me connais
Et si je t’oubliais
Je sais que tu m’aimes
Ta sainte présence
Elle m’environne
A chaque moment
Je sais que tu m’aimes
Je sais que tu m’aimes
A la croix je me prosterne
Où ton sang coula pour moi
Aucun amour n’est plus grand
Tu as gagné sur la mort
Ta gloire remplit les lieux très hauts
Rien ne peut nous séparer
Tu marches devant moi
Tu gardes mes pas
Ta main me soutient
Je sais que tu m’aimes
Tu déchire le voile
Tu traces un chemin
Car tu as tout accompli (x2)
Si tous s’éffondrer
devant mes yeux
Et tu te tiens devant moi
Je sais que tu m’aimes
Je sais que tu m’aimes
They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before his sight.
To this he has summoned them,
and (like a shot that scatters birds from trees)
their hands draw back from reaching for the loaves
upon his word: they fly across to him;
they flutter, frightened, round the supper table
searching for an escape. But he is present
everywhere like an all-pervading twilight-hour.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
On the night he was betrayed,
he took bread and gave you thanks and praise.
He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said:
Take this, all of you, and eat it:
this is my body which will be given up for you.
When supper was ended, he took the cup.
Again he gave you thanks and praise,
gave the cup to his disciples, and said:
Take this, all of you, and drink from it:
this is the cup of my blood,
the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.
It will be shed for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven.
Do this in memory of me.
Easter being quite early this year, it is the first time in a very long while that the chaos which is my office every end-of-March/month-of-April will not be affecting me during the Easter season. I’d like to really take advantage of this gift of time for prayer/reflection this year.
So I will be signing off here until sometime after Divine Mercy Sunday. I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and a very joyous Easter.
Christ is risen, Alleluia! Happy Easter to you all!
In, “The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great (c. 1256-1302)”, we are given an account of a very special visitation she received from the Lord one Easter Sunday. St. Gertrude was reciting the Matins of the Resurrection, and was moved to question the Lord about something during the chanting of the Alleluia at the Invitatory: “Teach me, I beseech Thee, O Master full of sweetness, in what manner I can best praise Thee by the ALLELUIA which is so often repeated on this Feast.” I am going to put the Lord’s response to St. Gertrude in bullet-form, so we can reflect on each point more easily:
“You can praise Me by the Alleluia, by uniting it to the praises which the Saints and Angels constantly offer Me in Heaven. You will observe that all the vowels, except the o, which signifies grief, are found in this word; and that instead of this o, the a is repeated twice.
At the first a, you will praise me with the Saints for the glorious immortality by which the sufferings of My Humanity and the bitterness of My Passion were rewarded;
at the e, praise Me for the sweet and ineffable joys which gladden My eyes in gazing upon the Most Holy Trinity;
at the u, unite yourself with the delight which I find in hearing the concerts of praises in honor of the Blessed Trinity which are sung by the Saints and Angels;
at the i, enjoy the sweet perfumes and odors which I find in the presence of the Most Holy Trinity;
at the second a, which is put in place of the o, rejoice that My Humanity, which was formerly passible and mortal, is now filled with the Divine immortality.”
I couldn’t help but think, as I read this, that it was a pretty tall order for a meditation on the word Alleluia. How could we have time to praise, unite, enjoy and rejoice in that space of time? I decided the only way to find out was to try it. Will you join me when you have a few minutes? Relax, dim the lights and enter into the power of the Alleluia.
(This Alleluia can be found on the CD “Passion & Resurrection”, sung by Sister Marie Keyrouz, a Byzantine (Arabic) chanter.)
Darkness and dying–
I hung Him in this place;
Perfect in beauty,
Now scarred with my disgrace.
My soul is so dark
All my sin has blocked the sun.
Tell me, where can I hide when
I see what I have done?
Hear now His mercy–
It brought Him to this place.
Grace great and boundless
Has crushed His form and face.
The skies bear the grief
Of a Father for His Son.
Lord, I bow here in silence
And see what love has done.
(Words by Ken Bible)
(Music: Traditional Folk Tune and Ken Bible; arr. by Ken Bible)
Stanzas applied spiritually to Christ and the soul.
A lone young shepherd lived
in pain
withdrawn from pleasure and
contentment,
his thoughts fixed on a
shepherd-girl his heart an open wound with love.
He weeps, but not from the
wound of love,
there is no pain in such affliction,
even though the heart is pierced;
he weeps in knowing he’s been
forgotten.
That one thought: his shining
one
has forgotten him, is such great
pain
that he bows to brutal handling
in a foreign land, his heart an open wound with love.
The shepherd says: I pity the
one
who draws herself back from my
love,
and does not seek the joy of my
presence, though my heart is an open wound with love for her.
After a long time he climbed a
tree,
and spread his shining arms,
and hung by them, and died, his heart an open wound with love.
(St. John of the Cross: Stanza 7 of “The Living Flame of Love”)
“He would fain shake off this immense burden that crushes Him – He would fain free Himself of this horrible load which makes Him shudder – His own purity rejects it – the very glance of the avenging Father, Who abandons Him in these muddy, putrid waters of guilt with which He sees Himself covered – All this rushes to His Spirit urging Him to draw back from the bitter Passion. The revulsion of His Divinity against sin adds to the conflict within His human soul. All instinct counsels that He unburden Himself of these infamies, rejecting the very thought of them. But the consideration of unvindicated justice and the unreconciled sinner predominates in His heart full of love. These two forces, these two loves, one more holy than the other, struggle for victory in the Heart of the Savior. Which will conquer? Without doubt He wants to give victory to offended justice. This gains over all else and He wants this to triumph. But what a spectacle must He represent? That of a man soiled with the filth of humanity. He, essential sanctity, to see himself filthy with sin, even if only in outward appearance? This, No! This terrifies Him, makes Him tremble, crushes Him.” (St. Padré Pio: The Agony of Jesus)
