Think of weeping Mary Magdalene at the entrance of the sepulchre. She thought Him to be a gardener. Or the two dense Disciples on the road to Emmaus curious that Jesus had no idea what had happened in the last three days. Today we have Peter and a few others after a night of empty net.
It leaves us wondering the quality of Jesus’ disciples. They consistently failed to recognise Him. Or perhaps closer to the truth is not their blindness but rather to ask what paradigm these disciples operate under.
Without a doubt the Resurrection is an experience out of this world. Perhaps what many could only fathom is Lazarus (Jn 11), or the son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7) or the daughter of Jairus (Mt 9; Mk5; Lk 8). Essentially, everyone came back to life. What happened to them was a temporary interruption. Amodern analogy would be to think of their coming back to life as surviving a clinical death in a hospital through a revival or resuscitation using a defibrillator.
But, in the case of Jesus, it was beyond interruption, termination or resuscitation. He returned to a whole new reality. He could walk through walls. He could appear and disappear from their sight.
Lazarus and all those who came back to life operated on the material plane. It is a material world, after all. The Resurrection is material too because we profess belief in the bodily resurrection. An inkling or a hint of the Resurrection is the Transfiguration. His Body was transfigured to the point that it was out of this world—what we may call the Beatific vision. A close example is St Thomas Aquinas whose theology was so sublime that he earned the monicker Angelic Doctor. At the top of his theological game, he apparently experienced a beatific vision after which he could no longer proceed. Why? According to him, whatever he had written paled in comparison to his vision of heaven. Unlike Peter who wanted to build three tents, Thomas felt that nothing could even measure up to what he had seen.
Perhaps this is where we are challenged in our Easter experience. What does it mean to be resurrected? The Pope’s passing away was surreal in the sense that he made his final journey on Easter Monday. Easter is not just the Sunday after Holy Saturday. Instead, Easter is an Octave meaning it covers the period between Easter and Divine Mercy Sunday. All these 8 days are counted as one day and because it is the Solemnity of the Resurrection of the Lord, nothing else, with the exception of funeral Masses, can be celebrated. But the Catholic world was seized by a kind of paroxysm about whether or not to have a memorial Mass for the Pope.
Liturgical law seems to prohibit a memorial Mass but because it was the Pope, different dioceses found ways to commemorate the Peoples’ Pope. Should we have had a memorial Mass for him is not a point of contention here. Rather the discussion centred on whether we should follow the law may just highlight how “materialistic” our worldview has become.
The Octave expresses Christ’s great Resurrection and nothing should obscure that beatific vision that we all have been invited to. Our eyes should be fixed on this central truth of our faith. The exception of a funeral Mass during the Easter Octave is a human consideration. All else can wait.
Could it be that our sense of recognition is as dense as Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre and Peter by the shore. We struggle to appreciate the Resurrection.
The story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is instructive. There are two ends to their journey. The first is quite human. They were on pretty decent pilgrimage. After about a 10-kilometre walk, the two invited Jesus to a meal with them. The second end, which is spiritual, is the one to which we are invited. While they were at table, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it and handed it to them. Then He disappeared.
They hurried back to tell the Eleven that they had recognised Him at the breaking of bread. Imagine the Proddies huffing and puffing about Catholics not familiar with the Bible. Yet the Proddies fail to recognise Jesus in the Eucharist. But before we patronise them, we too may suffer the same blindness.
Frequently we do not realise that we have the greatest gift to help us recognise the Risen Christ. The entire journey of the two Disciples to Emmaus is ascriptural description of the Eucharist. It is almost a frame-by-frame account of what we have been commemorating for the last two thousand years. The part of the journey where Jesus explained Sacred Scripture to the two disciples pertains to our Liturgy of the Word. While at table, the four verbs detailing the actions of Jesus direct our attention to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. He took bread corresponds to the offertory. He said the blessing is the Eucharistic Prayer. He broke the bread is our Fractio Panis. He gave it to them is the reception of Holy Communion.
The point here is when the consecrated Host is broken, do we recognise the Risen Lord? We are definitely familiar with the other three verbs of taking, saying, giving but often enough we fail to pay attention to the breaking of Bread. Jesus broke the Bread so that the Disciples may recognise Him—the Risen Lord.
The Easter Octave should give us a view of the Resurrection unobstructed. But the experience of the Pope’s death during Octave may have uncovered our materialistic world view for we were distracted from focusing on the Risen Lord. Every Eucharist highlights the Resurrection and the Easter Octave simply emphasises this truth that not even the death of a Pope should obscure that vision. The fact that we were caught up with honouring the Pope or not revealed how earth-bound our vision has become. The devil’s victory does not lie in holding on to us forever. His victory is to mislead us to an earth-bound existence.
The Devil cannot win over us. Not because he is weak but because Christ has won the war and He will not allow Satan to dominate us. The Devil can only prevail because we allow him to. Satan wins when we lower our gaze or restrict our vision to a merely earthly existence.
