Coffin Break #21 – Flesh Shaken, Spirit Stirred

Happy Friday, Everybody,

Here we go into our last Little Triduum before the big one. To commence Holy Week this Sunday is Palm Sunday, and our Gospel reading is Jesus’ Last Supper and Passion from Matthew 26:14 – 27:66, which you can read here:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032926.cfm

It gives us a lot to consider in the Light of the Grave.

I have been reading a book by Nicholas Diat called A Time to Die wherein the author writes of his visits to monasteries to learn how the monks face death. One might think that the detachment from the world and disciplined devotion to God which are essential to monastic life would guarantee an easy crossing from the here to the hereafter. But it is not always so. It would seem, from reading this book, that not only does no one here get out alive, but that few, if any, here get out with ease.

Our Lord’s words to the disciples that they would have their faith shaken on the night of his arrest came true, despite all the time they’d spent with him witnessing his miracles, and despite Peter’s bold reply that maybe the others’ faith would be shaken, but his would not (we know how that worked out!).

Soon after this, Jesus, finding Peter asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, tells him “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

With our privileged perspective of Jesus’ victory over death, and that we were created to live with him forever, how weak ought our flesh to be? Well, it remains… fleshly weak. Flesh is flesh, before, during and even after the death that ended all death. But the spirit? The spirit that wills can be strong, and God has given us a Divine Inverter to increase the strength of that spiritual will.

What is that inverter? It is Jesus himself. Paradoxically, when we take the things that shake our flesh and run them through Jesus our spirits are strengthened.

We might lament this inverse relationship as we cling to our physical existences, but God knows best. He knows that it is our spirit that will be carried over the threshold and that our bodies, in their present state MUST be left behind. You know this, and I know this too; it is this apparently terrible truth that shakes our flesh.

But appearances can be deceiving. Hosanna in excelsis!

Beauty in the Broken Places

An article was recently published about the neighborhood we have put Marian Caskets at the service of ministering to. Whenever you purchase a casket from us, some of the proceeds are going to these works of mercy as well.

https://philanthropydaily.com/beauty-in-the-broken-places-how-a-scranton-parish-is-reviving-newmans-vision/

Thank you all for giving us the privilege of doing this work and partnering with us to ease some of the very heavy burdens being carried by the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania!

Friday Coffin Break # 20 -- Jesus vs. the Zombies

Happy Friday, Everybody!

On this second to last Little Lenten Triduum, before the Great Triduum begins in two weeks on Good Friday, we are given for the Sunday Gospel the familiar story of Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. I thought last week’s reading was long, but this one is longer! Including the full text is making my emails too extensive, with not enough space left for reflecting on the Gospel in the Light of the Grave. If you would like to read the Gospel in its entirety, you can do so here:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032226.cfm

I have a confession to make regarding this reading. We had a Halloween party almost twenty years ago and I think I might have scrambled up the faith a wee bit for a few of the children. My wife read the story of Lazarus and when she said, “Lazarus, come out!” I popped out of a coffin/blanket chest that she was sitting next to and that nobody knew I was in. That much was okay, but along with being wrapped in some linens I was also wearing a pair of weird rubber zombie gloves to give a more startling effect. One 6-year-old attendee swallowed his gum.  I shouldn’t have worn those gloves.

Now, for today’s Friday musings, I would like to simply pull-out Jesus’ question to Lazarus’ sister, Martha, when he says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus speaks these words to Martha after she professes faith in the resurrection to come at the last day. He tells her that he is the resurrection and that anyone who believes in him shall never die. I highlight this to gently suggest to you, and to me, that the fright of death we experience is largely borne of our fallen, terror-fed, imaginations and not based in what is actually taking place. And I would say that our imaginations have been corrupted by our lazy acquiescence to an unbelieving culture in what we read, watch and listen to – manufactured for us by a despondent, misery-loving-company anti-communion of a culture of death.

As a thought experiment, let’s reverse Jesus’ words:

“…he who doesn’t believe in me, though he live, yet shall he die, and whoever dies and doesn’t believe in me shall never live…”

We were created for True Communion-- to be fully alive with God and through him, heart to heart, with each other for eternity, and more intimately than we can imagine. So intimate are we meant to be with each other that the very Resurrection and Life himself wept over witnessing the pain of the brief, four-day, separation of Lazarus from his kin. That is Heaven. But, in this fallen world, under the rule of its prince, the anti-communion that I write of is one where it often happens that the closer we are together, the more alien we become to one-another. So, back to those gloves – let’s fix our attention on Jesus and not the living dead, that way our startled stomachs will not be so full of bubblegum that we have little room for the Bread of Life who came to feed us, together, at his eternal banquet table.