Glorified Yet Crucified
Why are you cast down, my soul.
Why do you groan within me?
Hope in God, I will praise him still,
My savior and my God. (Psalm 42:5)
Throughout the Octave of Easter I found myself regularly praying with these words of the Prophet David. They were a salve to an unexpectedly downcast spirit I had after finishing out Holy Week. I think my dispiritedness emerged from a disconnect I was feeling: having been brought liturgically into this joyous Easter season while simultaneously beholding the same crucified Christ, but one crucified in the persons of our homeless friends.
This juxtaposition of Jesus suffering and dead on the cross and of Him triumphantly resurrected is striking, to put it lightly. Obviously, the impact of said contrast can propel anyone to momentous joy and certain hope, if the ordering is right — that is, if one goes from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Witnessing these events the other way around, however, can leave one nauseated.
While sitting with all of this I recalled something Fr. Ignacio had mentioned about the Holy Triduum. He said that those three days (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil) compose one continuous liturgy. Now because we, as human animals, think of and experience life through narratives, we were made to encounter the incarnate Word of God and His divine mysteries in discrete episodes diffused throughout Christ’s life. By this I mean to say that Jesus did not reveal Himself to us all at once, but rather step by step. Accordingly, we encounter the Paschal Mystery in parts, although parts which compose a whole.
Were we to have received it all at once, we would have been unable to understand the entirety of the Paschal Mystery (Jesus’ passion, death, resurrection, and ascension). Now, that is exactly the invitation of Christ and of His Church. As living members of His Mystical Body we are called and, indeed, enabled to live out simultaneously all of the mysteries of Christ’s life, the principal focus of which is His glorious resurrection. From the vantage of Easter Sunday, we can look back and know, through faith, that Christ was and is always glorified — notably in those moments when it seems so contradictory to believe as much, moments such as His agonizing passion and crucifixion. Thus we are able to “glory…in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as Saint Paul exhorts us to do.
It takes time to collapse Christ’s mysteries into a concurrent interior vision, but as we develop that ability we can better detach ourselves from the burden of our sufferings and crosses — knowing that as we participate in the Paschal Mystery, we live in the invisible reality of His glory, which is the more real reality, although it is hidden to us. This is the reality of our own lives thanks to our baptism and our living relationship with Jesus, but it is also true of our poor brethren on the streets — even those seemingly far from God. Only the Lord can know where any given friend of ours is along their personal salvation story. We, however, can know that we are always on such a course and that the heavenly end gives a new meaning to the rest of our story — that is our certain hope.
There is a unity in all of the events of the Paschal Mystery, and accordingly there is a unity to be found in our own lives. It is a unity which will only be revealed to us in full once we see our Savior face to face. This is the hope of Easter — and in my heart I fan the flames of this hope by recalling the proclamation of our Christ: “Behold, I make all things new.”
Alex Maynard