_-_WGA25601.jpg)
Third
Sunday of Easter
April
15, 2018
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
You are the witnesses of these things
Mr. Taylor Steggs had already lived three lives
in his eight chronological years. He was a man of experience, having moved
beyond the Oxford idyll of his youth to the metropolis of Atlanta. He had made
the grand tour of Europe with his mother, Mrs. Taylor Steggs and his father,
Mr. Taylor Steggs, Sr. and of course, now he had a sister, the wonderful and
vivacious Miss Taylor Steggs. Mr. Taylor Steggs loved his sister beyond
measure. He liked to talk to her, although her vocabulary was somewhat limited
by her having only, as yet, achieved the age of 6 months. He liked the little
strolls they took together, Mr. Taylor Steggs pushing her carriage, which Mr.
Taylor Steggs referred to as a “taxi”. And, of course, he liked telling her
things from his three lives worth of experience. He liked, he loved, sharing
his knowledge with his sister’s hungry little mind.
When we catch up with the family, they are on
their annual visit to Oxford. They came each year to visit Mr. Taylor Steggs,
Sr.’s mother, the elder Mrs. Taylor Steggs. Today, a beautiful June day, the
family is walking in the cemetery, visiting retired members of the family, as
well as Oxford notables, like Mr. Faulkner, whom Mr. Taylor Steggs had been
told was a very talented and lovely man, even if he was given a bit to the
drink. While his parents walked ahead, Mr. Taylor Steggs pushed the taxi and
did what he did best, talked. When they stopped at the large tomb of his
ancestor, Great Grandfather Steggs, known to the whole town as Mr. Taylor
Steggs, he sat down on a nearby bench to speak in earnest to his sister. He had
great dreams for Miss Taylor Steggs, which included a doctorate from Ole Miss
and terpsichorean grandeur. While he was waxing eloquently, he happened to look
down at his fat hand, resting on his fat thigh and he noticed something
strange, his hand, even in its fatness had become quite translucent. Quickly,
he held it up to the light filtering through the trees around Great Grandfather
Steggs’ tomb and he felt an odd feeling. Mr. Taylor Steggs was disappearing.
Literally, he was becoming fainter and fainter by the moment and what was more,
so was his sister, and the carriage, and the tomb of Great Grandfather Steggs.
All of it was evaporating. He looked ahead on the path and he could see his
parents ahead, but becoming fainter and fainter, almost perspiring into the
wind being eradicated by the slow knife of time.
And of course, this made him smile to himself. He
knew on this June day in Oxford that time was being eaten up, that kyros and chronos were oddly and beautifully conflating, surreptitiously
conflating. That is because, Mr. Taylor Steggs knew that it was Easter.
You are the witnesses of these things
Brothers and sisters, we stand today before an
all-encompassing mystery, not only the mystery of the dying and rising of
Jesus, but a mystery that touches us, each one of us, personally, sensually.
All of us are called to be witnesses of these
things we have been experiencing in the past days, the grandeur of the paschal
mystery of Christ.
It is the mystery of life, the life which is
forged, not on human endeavor alone, but human endeavor, heated in the forge of
divine promise and hammered out on the anvil of dreams
It is the mystery of death, not death as the end
of our striving, our longing, but death that arches up through the tree-line of
our imaginations and points out the gates of a greater destination, a higher
home.
It is the mystery of hope, hope that strives day
after day, through the quixotic quagmire of atrocities and mendacities, to hold
out arms and hands to a higher reality, a reality far from us, yet erotically
near.
It is the mystery of faith, a faith that shuns,
that puts aside all of our pretentious attitudes and lives fortuitously into
the life prescribed in the imaginations of children.
It is the mystery of love, a love not concluded
in the attraction of bodies, but a love which pours itself out onto the mystery
of the cross.
And into this mystery, in this paschal season, we
disappear, we are eradicated and our peculiarities, our ships of purpose, our
states, our forms become caught up into the only authentic place they can be,
into the Body of Christ and the mystery of God.
For you see, the events of Easter have changed
things. They have changed the world, allowing us to be something other,
something greater than ourselves.
They have allowed hesychasm, the mysterious lost silence of our world, a world now
forever parked on the peripheries of an empty tomb.
Like those men and women of old, we stand in the
light of an Easter morning, a light that penetrates our flesh and makes us translucent,
becoming light from light.
Like those men and women of old, we stand in the
joy of an Easter morning, a joy that moves us away from attachment to self, to
pursuits of the flesh, to others, a wild joy, a hilarious joy.
Like those men and women of old, we stand in the
threat of an Easter morning, a threat to our closely guarded relationships, and
those bodies to which we cling like wayward boats to anchors in the storm of
seas.
And you,
you are the witnesses of these things
You are the witnesses of these things
You are the witnesses of a world in which the
inevitability of sin dissolves into the inevitability of salvation
You are the witnesses of a world in which the
chains of poverty may be broken and the threat of war may be silenced
You are the witnesses of a world in which the
light of the resurrection may illumine the darkest corners of the human
imagination, or perhaps the less-than-human imagination.
You are the witnesses of a world that speaks the
babble of babes and the dreams of little men and women.
You are the witnesses to that slow knife of time
that cuts and cuts with such precision until nothing is left in me and you that
is not God, that nothing is left of me
and you at all.
You are the witnesses of a people who come
without solidity, even without probability, to offer hands outstretched to the
mystery of Easter, a mystery enfolded for us in the contours of bread and the
acidity of wine.
Brothers and sisters, you and I are he witnesses
of these things.
We are the witnesses of these things.
What in the world shall we do?
