Make no mistake: if He rose at all
\nit was as His body;
\nif the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
\nreknit, the amino acids rekindle,
\nthe Church will fall.<\/p>\n
It was not as the flowers,
\neach soft Spring recurrent;
\nit was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
\neyes of the eleven apostles;
\nit was as His Flesh: ours.<\/p>\n
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
\nthe same valved heart
\nthat \u2014 pierced \u2014 died, withered, paused, and then
\nregathered out of enduring Might
\nnew strength to enclose.<\/p>\n
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
\nanalogy, sidestepping transcendence;
\nmaking of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
\nfaded credulity of earlier ages:
\nlet us walk through the door.<\/p>\n
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
\nnot a stone in a story,
\nbut the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
\ngrinding of time will eclipse for each of us
\nthe wide light of day.<\/p>\n
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
\nmake it a real angel,
\nweighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
\nopaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
\nspun on a definite loom.<\/p>\n
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
\nfor our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
\nlest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
\nembarrassed by the miracle,
\nand crushed by remonstrance.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven Stanzas at Easter\u201d by John Updike . Our faith in the Paschal Mystery can help us get through the most difficult of times.\u00a0 We can find hope, even when we are feeling the pangs of death, knowing that new life can and will occur.\u00a0 We are going through such a time of dying right now in the Church as we continue to struggle with the aftermath of the revelations of sexual abuse by clergy and the cover up by other church officials.\u00a0 It\u2019s painful to go through the media scrutiny, not knowing what\u2019s true and what\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to be with the church as it is being attacked.\u00a0 And yet our faith tell us that it is just such an experience of dying to our pride and to our false sense of entitlement that will bring new life to the church.<\/p>\n There are aspects of our life as a Church that need to die.\u00a0 The attitude that clergy are above the law needs to die.\u00a0 The fear of admitting mistakes and having to deal with the resulting feelings of guilt and shame needs to die.\u00a0 The presence of patriarchy that is more concerned about keeping women in their proper place than in recognizing their baptismal dignity needs to die.\u00a0 There are those who, because of their fear, would counsel us to avoid this necessary dying\u2014to live in denial.\u00a0 If we listen to them, we run the risk of losing the opportunity of new life that God is holding out to us as Church.\u00a0 So, if we will, we can embrace this dying of those things that need to be left behind so that we can experience the power of the resurrected life that God holds out to us this Easter Day.<\/p>\n Fr. Robert Pierson, OSB<\/p>\n
\n Telephone Poles and Other Poems <\/em>\u00a9 1961.<\/p>\n
\nJesus Christ is risen from the dead.\u00a0 We know this from all four gospel accounts of the resurrection.\u00a0 We also know it from St. Paul, who says he knew of more than 500 eye witnesses of the Resurrected Lord.\u00a0 And we know it from our own personal experience of the Risen Lord in our own lives, from our own experiences of the death and resurrection \u2014 the Paschal Mystery.\u00a0 Our faith tells us that if we want to experience the New Life of the Resurrection, we need to be willing to go through the experience of dying, of letting go, that Jesus did in his own passion and death.\u00a0 St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans puts it this way:\u00a0 \u201cThrough baptism into his death we were buried with him, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life.\u00a0 If we have been united with him through likeness to his death, so shall we be through a like resurrection\u2026.If we have died with Christ, we believe that we are also to live with him.\u201d\u00a0 (Romans 6:\u00a0 4-5, 8 )<\/p>\n