Easter Finale

Easter came very early this year and the Great Fifty Days which follow come to a quick conclusion this weekend and next. The Ascension is celebrated this weekend, and quickly the community moves to the Feast of Pentecost the following weekend.

The Easter mysteries find completion in Jesus' return to the Father and by taking his rightful place as victor over sin and death. Variously, we read and believe that he “sits at the right hand of the Father” and that there he continually makes intercession for us. Or we read in John’s gospel that he goes “to prepare a place for us” and that he will return for us. With faith we hear the promise that we will not “be left as orphans”, but that the Father will send his Spirit among the believers.

We have moved from Easter, to Ascension, and soon to Pentecost. Pentecost caps the Easter Season with the sending of the Spirit. As Pentecost was in the Jewish scriptures a feast of the law-giving at Sinai to Moses, celebrating and completing the covenant between the Lord Yahweh with his People, so in the Christian community Jesus, as the New Law, is celebrated in the Spirit. At Sinai, God’s People encounter God and are enabled to walk in his presence through the Law.

Pentecost and New Birth
Pentecost, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, is a celebration of new life and rebirth by the power of the Spirit. The metaphors of the story are wind, fire, and water, where the Spirit moves over and through the community. The movement of the Spirit is at once described as a powerful wind and fiery tongues, enabling new vitality in the Apostles and the believing community as preachers of the Good News of Jesus. In a reversal of the Tower of Babel, the new community of believers is made up of believers of many nations. All are said to understand “as in their own tongue.”

The Acts records the preaching of the gospel, the story of Jesus’ death and rising from the dead. The consequence of the story is the coming to faith and an invitation to baptism and the Spirit is received by the laying on of hands. Jesus is the New Law known by the power of the Spirit discovered in the community’s actions of passing through water and Spirit, from death to life. The whole community of believers comes to new life in Jesus Christ, in whom they come to know the Father and the Spirit.

The Easter Mysteries
The prayers of the Great Fifty Days of Easter have spoken of the “Easter Mysteries”. What is the experience of the Easter Mysteries? How does one come to know, understand, and believe? The newly baptized, anointed in the Spirit, and welcomed at the Lord’s Table are invited to a time of exploring the mysteries. The Greek word “mystogogia” is the description in the catechumenal documents.

These new believers have come through the various initiation rituals: baptismal washing, going down into the waters and coming up from them, laying-on-of-hands, anointing, and being fed within the community of believers. A final phase of coming into the believing community calls for rooting in the faith and coming to know an interiority of life in God. This, in large measure, would call for reflection, prayer, contemplation, and personal and communal acceptance of the Presence of God in their lives.

The observable dimension of this exploration of the mysteries is the common life in the sharing of goods both spiritual and tangible. The new believers continue in the worship community, hearing God’s Word and sharing the Eucharistic breaking of the Bread. They are gathered in the sharing of life within the Church and in the outreach mission within our world.

John's Readings
The gospel readings from John toward the end of the Easter Season press the community to see and know the Father. In those readings we hear Jesus speak of his oneness with the Father. We hear him tell the believing community that those of the world, the unbelievers, “neither see nor understand” this God Mystery. They, those who have come to faith, however, do see and understand, for they see the Father because they have come to know him in seeing and recognizing the Christ. All of this is accomplished by the sending of the Spirit, the indwelling power and presence of God in the community.

The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus we read in John’s Gospel. We last heard that prayer on Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Mysteries. On the way to Gethsemane on his way to his death, Jesus prays: “That they all may be one as you Father in me, and I in you. That they all may be one in us.” The whole purpose of Jesus' mission, his death, and his resurrection is set in motion. We are to live within the very life of God. We are to have “eternal life, and have it in abundance.”

Where is this unity with God to be found? Through the Easter Season we have come to know that unity in the experiences of the community of the resurrection. The witness of this life in God is known, preached, and shared in Jesus Christ, once dead, but now risen. The life which Jesus exhibits is, in fact, available to every believer. Each believer has passed from death to life through Baptism, Confirmation, and sharing at the Lord’s Table. It is there where we are most visibly and tangibly one. Jesus returns to the Father, but by our life in the Spirit, his mission, life, death, and presence are continued in the community of believers. In prayer and contemplation we are the Easter Mystery, we embrace the Christ of that experience, and the Mystery embraces us in God’s Spirit.

CDH