Saturday, May 17, 2014
VI Easter May 13, 2012
VI Easter
May 13, 2012
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all be made alive.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
Today's collect is phrased in a way
that requires careful interpretation, I think. When we ask God to pour into our
hearts love for God, we seem to be asking God to excite feeling toward
himself/it is hard to think of a way to find a corporate or communal meaning to
the word hearts: it seems to be speaking of us as individuals. Our hearts considered as our individual
spiritual centers. It seems to be asking God to set up a bilateral relationship
with each of us, independently of all the rest of the people.
Last week's epistle made it clear
that the love of God is about God's love for us, and that our love for God is
really love for God — whom we have not seen — only insofar as it is love for
our brothers and sisters. The collect goes on to ask that we may love God in
all things and above all things. But if St. John's insight is correct, it is
not possible to love God "above" all of our brothers and sisters — or
even any particular one of them. Our love for them is our love for God. If the collect is asking God to help us
develop that capacity, then that's fine. But our own inner, spiritual life of
adoration can very easily turning into an idolatry of our own imaginings.
As you have probably noticed,
homilies are often structured like a bad-news /good-news joke, and today is an
example. The bad news is that everybody's a sinner; everyone fails to love perfectly.
The good news is that God loves us anyway, our failures do not cause a God to
love us less, and God loves us — every single one of us — so much that He is
getting things ready to delight us in ways that surpass anything we can desire
or imagine. He is going to do this for us, together, all of us and not just for
some of us, as individual exceptions.
There are exceptions, I think:
those who near perfection in love in this life find themselves (according to reports)
in a state of blessedness. The closer their love of brother and sister is too
perfect, self-sacrificing love, the closer they approach the perfect reflection
the divine image. I think this may be what Jesus meant when he said "be
the perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect." These saints,
however, are not removed from the human community. Quite the opposite, they approach
perfection in their love of other people. They're salvation — there wholeness,
their perfection — is not the triumph of her heroic individual, but a
perfection of the image of the communal, Triune God.
Every human being is called to that
perfection. The Easter Troparion, which I use as a doxology at the end of these
Paschaltide homilies, ends with the phrase "… And bestowing life on those
in the tombs." That means all the dead. And the Pascha nostrum, which we use in its full form in place of the Agnus dei in Paschaltide says:”… For as
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Not some: all. All shall be made alive in the new
life of perfect, communal love, which is what we mean by life in Christ. I
think salvation has to be universal, because death is universal. Human life —
life in Adam, which means life yoked with the inevitability of decay, death,
and corruption unto nothingness — shall be replaced by life in Christ. No one
is excluded, not even the most wicked, because "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
If our Eucharistic celebration is a
foretaste of this heaven, it means that everyone is included. Everyone is
equal, everyone is welcome, everyone is beloved, and not only us human beings,
but all things —ta panta — in which, the collect prays we may grow to love God.
Alleluia! Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down
death by death,and giving life to all in the tombs. Alleluia!
