THE P RTAL
April 2015
Page 8
A Resurrection like His
An Easter reflection by a Sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary
‘For if we have been united with him in a
death like his, we shall certainly be united with
him in a resurrection like his’. Romans 6:5
C
hrist is
risen! The ancient Christian
greeting resounds down the centuries up till
our own day. The Paschal fire has been lit, and the
ancient hymn, the Exsultet, has been sung:
‘… On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work
of bees and of your servants’ hands, an evening
sacrifice of praise, … a fire into many flames
divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its
light, for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by
mother bees to build a torch so precious.
‘O truly blessed night, when things of heaven
are wed to those of earth, and divine to the
human. Therefore, O Lord, we pray you that
this candle, hallowed to the honour of your
name, may persevere undimmed, to overcome
the darkness of this night.
‘Receive it as a pleasing fragrance, and let it
mingle with the lights of heaven. May this flame
be found still burning by the Morning Star: the
one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your
Son, who, coming back from death’s domain, has
shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives
and reigns for ever and ever’.
There is a sense in which all Christian life is an
Exsultet, a hymn of joy to the Light of Christ. A trace
of an early Christian hymn acclaims: ‘Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light’.
(Ephesians 5.14) The Light that Christ gives is His own
Light, Himself: that life was totally consumed for us in
the Passion, just as the light of a candle comes from the
wax that totally disappears in burning.
By long tradition, the first resurrection appearance
of the Lord was to His Blessed Mother, an appearance
well hidden in the depths of that Easter night.
it is in this way that our whole life comes to bear the
imprint of Easter.
In monastic life, which is a particularly intense
expression of paschal life, the vows are what bind us in
to the dying and rising of our Lord. In our consecration,
we become like that paschal candle, melting away
through living ‘under a Rule and an Abbot’ (Rule of St
Benedict Chapter 1), burning with love for our Lord.
Blessed John Henry Newman prayed,
‘Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine
as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to
others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee.
None of it will be mine. ... Give light to them as
well as to me; light them with me, through me.
Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth,
Thy will … not by words, but by my example and
by the catching force, the sympathetic influence,
of what I do—by my visible resemblance to Thy
saints, and the evident fullness of the love which
my heart bears to Thee’.
(Meditations on Christian Doctrine,
Jesus the Light of the Soul, para 3).
The life of union with God is rooted in baptism,
through which our whole being becomes bound in
to the paschal mystery. As St Paul said, ‘He who is
May you be blessed in the living out of your own
united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him’. (1 paschal life, so that the Light of Jesus may shine in you
Corinthians 6.17) Is this not an astonishing claim? Yet and through you.
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