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Viewpoints
from May 13, 2022
30 CATHOLIC NEWS HERALD
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Fred Gallagher
He is risen … Now what?
There are often letdowns after we make it to the other side of a holiday. Some feel a little lost after Christmas Day, for instance. Those grieving the loss of a loved one do their best to hold it together, but then once the holiday passes, the loneliness and depression can set in. It is a common dynamic.
And so, with the roller coaster of emotion that Holy Week brings us, and the liturgical culmination coming with the joy of Easter Sunday, our spirits can be left wanting. How do you follow the most important day in human history, the day Jesus rose from the dead? Now what?
Going to scriptural accounts of the events immediately following the Resurrection may be one way to keep in touch with the energy of Easter. We remember that Jesus came to us again. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, a woman out of whom He had driven demons, a woman who followed Jesus loyally and with great love. At the tomb she didn’t know Him at first, but then He said her name and she knew it was her risen Lord.
Who among us has failed to recognize our Savior when He was appearing to us in the guise of someone in need?
In 1982 the city of Beirut was being bombed. The staff of an orphanage for children who were severely mentally and physically challenged had fled, and the children were abandoned. When the dilemma came to Mother Teresa’s attention, she came to Beirut. She expressed to officials her desire to go behind the lines and get the children out but was assured it was impossible; only a ceasefire could save them.
Mother Teresa let everyone know she was praying for just that. And in a complete surprise to many, the next morning Beirut was suddenly quiet, a ceasefire in place. Mother Teresa got to the orphanage and, as she embraced the first child, she exclaimed with a great, wide smile, “I have found Him! I have found Jesus!”
When Mother Teresa embraced the child, as when Mary Magdalene heard her name, she recognized the Savior. Perhaps that is part of our postResurrection activity – finding Jesus in a family member, a friend, a co-worker, a stranger.
Another appearance of Jesus after the Resurrection was to the two grieving disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were saddened by recent events but asked their companion to join them for a meal. It was then, in the breaking of the bread, that they recognized Jesus.
The Emmaus Road that is the unfurling of our daily life leads to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We come to know Christ, to share in His life, in the Eucharist. In weekday or vigil or Sunday Masses, we come to know Him. When hospitalized or homebound, the ill and burdened come to know Him in the Eucharist. He appears to us if our eyes and ears and hearts remain open.
Jesus had appeared to some of the apostles but not to all of them together until Thomas was present – Thomas, the great symbol of our human nature, of the human mind and heart given to doubt, falling to the limits of reason. Jesus’ solution for His doubting disciple was to offer up His wounds to be touched.
When Thomas did so, he uttered a phrase that means the world to me. During a Bible study years ago, two older ladies in the class shared the tradition of saying Thomas’ very words as the host and the chalice are raised during the Consecration: “My Lord and my God!” I took to saying it myself and have been doing so for many years now.
The Resurrection is alive when we touch the wounds of a fellow traveler. If hands are reaching out to those suffering, we see Jesus perhaps in ways we had not before.
He is risen. Now what? I will listen for my name. I’ll know it when I hear it, and then I will try to speak to others about feeling His presence. Now what? We all walk our daily roads with those we love and, every now and then, we are joined by someone special who ultimately, as we come to know each other, makes a real difference. And we know that in that engagement is the presence of God. We go to Mass, and we are fed.
He is risen. Now what? We get busy loving those neighbors who are wounded, those lonely and forlorn, those hungry and devoid of guidance, those who have adopted the rationalism that oppresses the soul and dominates our culture. We figure out how to translate the touching of Christ’s wounds and apply the action to a current situation. It may mean just listening to someone. Most people, especially the wounded, just want to be heard. So we listen. We let the better angels of our nature take charge.
Now what? We say, over and over and over throughout our days and nights encountering His presence, “My Lord and my God!” catholicnewsherald.com | May 13, 2022
April Parker
Everyday life can reveal the glory of the Risen Lord, too
In the season of Easter we are caught up in a rapture of brilliance, a spiral of vibrant color and newness of life. We delight in heralding, “Christ is Risen! Hallelujah!” Somehow, life is happier and refreshed.
Yet, over time, as we wind our way back to ordinary time, some of that newness wears off. The ordinary of everyday life creeps back in. The hidden parts of our life that are gray or black start to stick out among the fading color. Perhaps we have been dealing with a longterm illness or other weights that pull on our lives, such as infertility or divorce, the loss of a loved one, debt or job loss.
We remember back to our jubilation at Easter and think: If Christ is master of even death, then why, after countless hours of prayer, am I still dealing with this burden? If Jesus were here beside me, would He touch me and heal me? Would He bring the lost back to life? Would He make it all new again? What did I do to suffer so much?
In John 9, Jesus and His disciples came upon a man blind from birth. The disciples asked, “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus gently and simply answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (Jn 9:1-5).
We see this same truth played out again and again. Look at the countless stories of infertility down through the generations from Abraham to Zechariah that eventually brought forth a holy nation as numerous as the stars. In our own lives, what if the inability to have children leads one couple to adopt a small child into a Christian home who would have otherwise not known Christ? What if that child grows up to be a Catholic priest?
Now, think about Ruth, the Moabite, who followed her motherin-law Naomi back to Bethlehem in the land of Judah. Ruth experienced great loss even before completely pulling up stakes in her home of Moab. Her husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law died in battle, leaving the women completely alone, unprotected and unprovided for. So Ruth clung to faith in one person, Naomi, who became a bridge builder for her to come to know God – and ultimately for His glory to be revealed through her.
Ruth told Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). In Bethlehem, they had a very poor existence, to the point that Ruth went to glean leftover grain in the fields to feed them both. But it was there that she caught the eye of Boaz, a wealthy and respected landowner, and God’s glory began to be manifest. They married, and their great-grandson was King David, in whose line Jesus was born.
If you, too, have lost someone dear to you, it is not so much a door closed as a new door opening for you to invite someone else into your life who may need you. Could you be a bridge builder to God’s glory, as were both Ruth and Naomi?
Another example of God’s glory being revealed through death can be found in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis. In it, Aslan the lion acts as Christ by giving himself freely over to death at the hand of the White Witch to save the life of another. The stone table, on which the lion was sacrificed, then cracks and Aslan reappears in all his shining glory, romping around with such newness and vigor that no one can keep up with him. He bounds to the witch’s castle and frees those who had been turned to stone.
God is at work in you even through loss, illness and strife. His glory is close at hand.
Continue to allow the joy of Easter to pulsate through your life. Give yourself over to it and let God’s glory be revealed and fulfilled.
In his book “Spiritual Warfare,” Dan Burke encourages all Christians to pray “God, open the gate of the path that I am to go for your glory.”
This has become a prayer I say several times daily, and I cannot believe the doors that open, directing me down the path God has prepared for me in order to serve His ultimate purpose.
Deacon Matthew Newsome
Our Mother at Cana
May is a month especially dedicated to the Blessed Mother. Mary’s role in the life of the Church is a point on which many of our Protestant brethren are confused. They may accept the biblical text that all generations will call her blessed (Lk 1:38) but fail to understand the special place that Mary has in the hearts of many Catholics and in our traditional devotions.
When I am called upon to explain the role of the Blessed Mother in our faith, my “go-to” passage is the wedding at Cana, recounted in John 2:1-12.
Jesus and his mother are guests at a
wedding when the couple runs out of wine. This would have been more than a minor embarrassment. Jewish marriage rituals at the time prescribed special courses of wine to be served; a lack of wine meant that the ritual could not be completed. The couple clearly have a problem. What does Mary do? She helps them by bringing their problem to the attention of her Son.
“They have no wine,” she says (Jn 2:3). Note the simplicity of her request. She does not tell Jesus what to do. She does not suggest how He might solve the problem. She does not, in fact, ask Him to do anything at all. She simply presents the problem to Him, trusting her Son to do what is best.
What a model she is for our own prayer! How often, when we are faced with difficulties, do we attempt to instruct God in how we want Him to solve our problems? Would that we might have the confidence of Mary to simply entrust our problems to Christ, knowing that He understands our needs, and how to meet them, better than we do ourselves.
Having presented the couple’s dilemma to her Son, Jesus responds to His mother by saying, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). This may appear to us to be a rebuke, but it is not. In addressing his mother as “woman,” Jesus is not being rude, as it would be perceived if any of us were to call our mothers by that term. In Hebrew this was a term of respect, like “ma’am.” It is the same word Jesus uses to address His mother from the cross, when He says, “Woman, behold your son” (Jn 19:26). It is a term that reaches back to the Garden, to the title given to Eve: “This one shall be called ‘woman’ for out of man this one has been taken” (Gen 2:23).
The “hour” Jesus refers to is the hour of his passion. He is aware of what his mother is asking. He knows that if He obeys her request and manifests His divinity in this public way, it will set into motion a series of events leading to the cross. Is she ready for that? Is she ready to give up her Son for the sake of the world? The devoted and obedient Son will not leave His mother without her permission.
What is Mary’s answer? Speaking to the servers, she says only, “Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2:5). Once more, her confidence in Jesus is complete.
Whatever He decides to do must, by definition, be best. And we know the rest of the story. Jesus tells the servers to fill six stone jars with water. They do, but when they take the jars to the head waiter, he discovers them to be filled with such wine that he is amazed at its quality. John calls this “the beginning of His signs,” after which the disciples began to believe in Him (Jn 2:11). Mary’s actions in this passage are illustrative of her ongoing role in the
Church. What she does here for this couple she continues to do in heaven for us; she intercedes for our needs and points us to her Son. The most familiar Marian prayer is the Ave
Maria or “Hail Mary.” The first part of the prayer is an address: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” This combines the biblical greetings given to Our Lady by St. Gabriel (Lk 1:28) and St. Elizabeth (Lk 1:42). The second part of the prayer is our petition: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
In our prayers to Mary, we ask for her to intercede for us in our various needs, just as she interceded for the couple at Cana. We ask for her intercession during the two most important times of our lives: our last moment and this present moment. That’s when we need the help of Mary’s Son the most. This prayer also tells us why we ask Mary to intercede for us. She is holy, and the prayer of a righteous person is effective (Jas 5:16). And she is the Mother of God. God listens to His mother. Why should we think that to be true? Because the Bible tells us so.
“Do whatever He tells you.” These are Mary’s words to each one of us. She hears our prayers; let us hear her instructions. She does for us today the same thing she did at Cana. She points to her Son and says “Listen to Him,” just as the Father said at the transfiguration (Lk 9:35).
Mary wants what God wants, always. So we can’t go wrong by following her. And if we follow her, she will lead us to her Son, because she is always at His side. That’s what she does. That’s who she is. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.
Why do we ask Mary to intercede for us? She is holy, and the prayer of a righteous person is effective. And she is the Mother of God. DEACON MATTHEW NEWSOME is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.
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