Paschal Mystery - 1
Dear Friends,
The faith formation that I received beginning as a child deeply impressed me with the significance of the week we are now living.
As you know, we name it Holy Week.
Why? Because in these days, we remember the core of our faith: the paschal mystery.
Our word paschal is the adjective for the noun Passover.
Our Jewish brothers and sisters are celebrating Passover right now – from March 27 to April 3.
Passover is their remembrance of the event in the Book of Exodus – the passing over of God’s people from slavery in Egypt to freedom in a new land.
We Christians believe that this passing over event was a kind of foretelling or preliminary to a new Passover.
This happens with Christ and his passing over from death to resurrection.
We also believe that what Christ experiences is a promise of our own passing over from death to resurrection.
This is for us the paschal mystery, the heart of our faith, the lens through which we view, understand, and interpret all of life.
“Christian spirituality does not apologize for the fact that, within it, the most central of all mysteries is the paschal one, the mystery of suffering, death, and transformation.
In Christian spirituality, Christ is central and, central to Christ, is his death and rising to new life so as to send us a new Spirit.”
So, on Good Friday, we are absorbed in the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.
On Easter Sunday, we celebrate his passing over from death to new life and the hope that this gives us.
And, back to Holy Thursday, this day is about the way that Jesus gave us to remember and to be one with him in the mystery of dying and rising: the Eucharist.
So, Holy Week is all about the paschal mystery, the heart of our faith.
More reflections on this next week, in the Inbox of April 7!
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from The Holy Longing by Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.
Paschal Mystery - 2
Dear Friends,
The paschal mystery is not just a one-time event at the end of our earthly life.
Rather, it is even an everyday experience –
There can be daily, personal dyings-to-self and risings-to-new.
For example, children, teens, college students die to their desire to play computer games all day and, instead, apply themselves well to their studies.
They do this as a way to rise – to come to fuller life now and eventually as adults.
We die to our pride or ego and choose to forgive someone who has offended us or to ask for forgiveness for something we did.
In doing this, we rise – we come to more fullness as persons and maybe even come to a fuller relationship with another.
Again, we die to our need to be accepted as one of the group by remaining silent or speaking up to counter racist remarks.
Here, we retain our integrity and come more fully alive in the love of Christ.
And again, we may suffer physically with illness, we pray to God for healing, and we try to join our suffering to the redemptive suffering of Christ on the cross.
As difficult as this may be, we become more one with God who is life itself.
So, the paschal mystery is something we can experience often in the course of our earthly journey.
“The paschal mystery is the mystery of how we, after understanding some kind of death, receive new life and new spirit.
Jesus, in both his teaching and in his life, showed us a clear paradigm for how this should happen.”
Maybe we can say that the paschal mystery is a process.
It is a process of becoming more and more the person God created us to be by following the way of God’s Son, Jesus.
Our engagement in this process prepares us for the final experience of the paschal mystery at the end of our journey in this world.
Please also note the Inbox Inspirations of last week, March 31, for more reflections on the paschal mystery.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from The Holy Longing by Father Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I.
No comments:
Post a Comment