20150407 ENCOUNTERING THE RISEN LORD ON HIS OWN TERMS
Readings at Mass
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First reading
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Acts 2:36-41 ©
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On the day of
Pentecost, Peter spoke to the Jews: ‘The whole House of Israel can be certain
that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.’
Hearing
this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the apostles, ‘What must
we do, brothers?’ ‘You must repent,’ Peter answered ‘and every one of you must
be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and
you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise that was made is for
you and your children, and for all those who are far away, for all those whom
the Lord our God will call to himself.’ He spoke to them for a long time using
many arguments, and he urged them, ‘Save yourselves from this perverse
generation.’ They were convinced by his arguments, and they accepted what he
said and were baptised. That very day about three thousand were added to their
number.
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Psalm
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Psalm
32:4-5,18-20,22 ©
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The Lord fills the
earth with his love.
or
Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia!
The word of the Lord
is faithful
and all
his works to be trusted.
The Lord loves
justice and right
and fills
the earth with his love.
The Lord fills the
earth with his love.
or
Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia!
The Lord looks on
those who revere him,
on those
who hope in his love,
to rescue their souls
from death,
to keep
them alive in famine.
The Lord fills the
earth with his love.
or
Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia!
Our soul is waiting
for the Lord.
The Lord
is our help and our shield.
May your love be upon
us, O Lord,
as we
place all our hope in you.
The Lord fills the
earth with his love.
or
Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia!
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Gospel
Acclamation
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Ps117:24
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Alleluia, alleluia!
This day was made by
the Lord:
we rejoice and are
glad.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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John 20:11-18 ©
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Mary stayed outside
near the tomb, weeping. Then, still weeping, she stooped to look inside, and
saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the
head, the other at the feet. They said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ ‘They
have taken my Lord away’ she replied ‘and I don’t know where they have put
him.’ As she said this she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, though
she did not recognise him. Jesus said, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you
looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have
taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.’
Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew,
‘Rabbuni!’ – which means Master. Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me,
because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers,
and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your
God.’ So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord
and that he had said these things to her.
ENCOUNTERING
THE RISEN LORD ON HIS OWN TERMS
07
April 2015, Tuesday within the Octave of Easter
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: ACTS 2:36-41;
JN 20:11-18
Many
people are seeking to encounter the Risen Lord but never encountered Him.
What could be the reasons for failing to encounter the Lord? The truth is
that we all want to encounter Him on our own terms rather than in the way the
Lord wants us to encounter Him. We are basically self-willed and
self-centered. That is what many of us do in relationships. We profess
that we love them when in truth we love ourselves more. We want to love
them but only on our own terms rather on the terms of our beloved. So
what is frustrating is that many of us are imposing our friendship on others
and making demands on our relationships or loving them the way we like to love,
so much so that those whom we “supposedly” love feel pressurized, stifled or
even made use of, since they are being loved, not for their sake but for our
sake. If we truly love someone, then it is important that we love
the person in the way that the person wants to be loved, for only then can he
or she feel our love, since we are putting their interests before ours.
This is the true meaning of love. In the same way too, in our encounter
with the Risen Christ, we must be ready to meet Him on His terms and not ours.
What then are His terms?
Repent
and receive the forgiveness of sins! This was what Peter said when the
Jews asked Him, “What must we do?” He replied, “You must repent and every
one of you must be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of
your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Before we
can see the Risen Lord, we must seek repentance of heart. So long as we
remain in our sins and refuse to acknowledge and confess them with a contrite
heart, we will not be able to see Jesus. The crowd, we are told at Pentecost,
“were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the apostles, ‘What must we do,
brothers?’” Are we cut to the quick upon hearing a homily or reading the
Word that convicts us of our sins? If not, there will be no change in our
lives. The truth is that for many of us, even if we know our sins, we are
not cut to the heart and therefore we have neither real contrition nor
repentance of our sins.
What
could be some of these sins? Firstly, we could be wallowing in self-pity
like Mary Magdalene. She was crying and weeping apparently for Jesus, but
in reality, it was for herself. In her sadness and grief, she could not
recognize the Lord. We too could be allowing our self-preoccupation to
hinder us from recognizing the Lord who comes to us in so many ways each day,
through nature, events and persons. More often than not, we allow our
hurts, un-forgiveness, pride, envy and our loneliness to lead us into
self-pity. Today, the Lord is asking us to reach out instead, to look out
and to look up if we want to find Him. Indeed, we are told Mary did
that. Initially, she was looking down and then it was the second time
when she looked up that she could recognize Jesus when He called her by
name. Yes, we must stop thinking about ourselves and start loving God and
others, for it is in reaching out to them that we allow God to find us through
them.
Secondly,
if we cannot encounter the Risen Lord, it is because we are clinging to our own
vision and idea of how the Lord should be meeting us. We heard how others
have experienced the Lord and we think that we, too, will experience Him in the
same manner. This is tantamount to clinging to the earthly Jesus that Mary
Magdalene knew and loved. But Jesus comes on His own terms, in a new way
and in a way beyond our imagination. That is why Jesus wanted her to move
to another level of faith and relationship with Him, in spirit. He told
Mary, “Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But
go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your
Father, to my God and your God.” Similarly, Peter told the people, “The
whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you
crucified both Lord and Christ. … The promise that was made is for you and your
children and for all those who are far away, for all those whom the Lord our
God will call to himself.” The resurrection of Jesus too was an amazing
event, for how could a carpenter and a condemned criminal of Nazareth be raised
from the dead! So are we ready to be open to the impossible, or do we
restrict the power and the wisdom of God from act in the way He has chosen for
us?
Thirdly,
it could be because we have no real love for Jesus. Mary truly loves the
Lord. Her love for the Lord was not an intellectual love. She loved
Him deeply from her heart. This love is shown in her desire to see
Him. This love is manifested in her devotion to Jesus, going to the tomb
to anoint His body, crying when she discovered His body was
missing. How much do we long for Jesus? I think we long to
see our loved ones much more than we long to see Jesus or be with Him. We
pay lip service of love to Jesus but we hardly spend time with Him and we
hardly miss His presence in our daily life. We come to Him only when we need
Him, not because we love Him but because we want Him to do something for
us. If we truly want to seek Him, we must long for His presence and
desire Him. When we love Him sufficiently, we will be able to recognize
His presence when He comes. Indeed, for those whom we love, we can
instinctively recognize their presence.
But it
is not sufficient to give up sins; we must receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit. The truth is that we cannot find Him unless He first finds
us. We must initially desire Him by our repentance. Once we give up
our sins, He will see our sincerity and desire and seek us out, just as He
sought Mary in the garden. Mary was able to recognize Him only because
the Lord took the initiative of calling her. We too can find Him, but
only when we see Him with our whole heart.
To
encounter the Lord, we must be called by name. Indeed, in all the
conversion experience stories in the bible, one common thread is that all of
them were called by name. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the prophets and of
course the apostles, were called by the Lord by name. To be called by
name implies a certain intimacy. All of us get excited or pay attention
when someone addresses us by name. Without a name, we are nobody.
When someone does not know us by name, we are impersonal to him/her. That
is why a personal relationship begins with calling the other person by
name. To call a person by name in the bible means that we know the
person and the person knows us. To encounter the Risen Lord, have you
heard Him calling you by name, as He called Magdalene who immediately could
then recognize her master?
But how
can we hear the Lord calling us by name unless we are available to Him?
We must listen to Him calling us. And how can this happen unless we
listen to Him? He comes to us through the Word of God, through the
teachers of the Church, through our superiors and through our brothers and
sisters. The question is, do we listen to Him and allow Him to speak to
us? Unless we are ready to be like Mary Magdalene who pondered and prayed
at the tomb of Jesus, we can never listen to His voice calling us by
name. How could any good Catholic live his Christian life without
withdrawing from the world for a few days in a retreat to spend time listening
to the voice of the Lord speaking to him and affirming him of His personal love
for him?
To
encounter the Lord deeply, there is one more thing we must do. We must
not possess Him selfishly for ourselves. We are called to share what we
have received, namely, the joy of being with Him. Obedience in faith
is what is required of us if we want our relationship with Jesus to grow and
deepen. Again, that was what Mary did. She was instructed to
go and tell the brothers about what she saw. Even though she was
ridiculed, yet by sharing the marvelous event of the resurrection, her faith
grew because the disciples’ faith eventually grew as well. This is true
also in friendships. Only when we are ready to share our friends with
others, can we find real happiness. So let us continue during this Easter
Octave to remain with Jesus the Risen Lord in prayer so that having encountered
Him and heard Him calling us by name, we too can also proclaim to others
convincingly and joyfully that we have seen the Lord.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh
Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Singapore
© All Rights Reserved
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