Liturgies

An elderly man lay dying in his bed. While suffering the agonies of impending death, he suddenly smelled the aroma of his favourite biscuits wafting up the stairs. Gathering his remaining strength, he lifted himself from the bed. Leaning against the wall, he slowly made his way out of the bedroom, and with even greater effort, gripping the railing with both hands, he crawled downstairs.

With laboured breath, he leaned against the door frame, gazing into the kitchen. Where if not for death's agony, he would have thought himself already in heaven, for there, spread out upon waxed paper on the kitchen table were literally hundreds of his favourite biscuits.
Was it heaven? Or was it one final act of heroic love from his devoted Italian wife of sixty years, seeing to it that he left this world a happy man?

Mustering one great final effort, he threw himself towards the table, landing on his knees in a crumpled posture.
His aged and withered hand trembled towards a biscuit at the edge of the table, when it was suddenly smacked with a spatula by his wife....."Get lost!" she said, they're for the funeral."
The old man assumed the biscuits were for him. Someone once said “you know what happens when you assume- you make an ASS out of you and me because that is how it is spelt.” (ASS-U-ME)
The disciples in this resurrection story from Luke assumed Jesus was dead. A valid and reasonable assumption; but they had forgotten the words Jesus spoke to them while he was in Galilee, “that the promised one had to be handed over into the power of sinners and be crucified, and rise again on the third day (Lk 244) and then they remembered Jesus’ words, we are told. It was like a light bulb moment and in remembering, they too entered into the resurrection experience-they did as St Paul writes to the Galatians.
“Because I have been crucified with Christ
I live now not my own life but the life of Christ
Now lives in me.” (Gal 220)
The Jesus story was to be their story. The small self, the egoic me, the separate self, recognizes its non-existence and dies, but what happens in its death it takes on the life of Christ, the universal self, the larger self, the self immersed in the whole.
I live now not my own life (which I once thought was the only life), but the life of Christ now lives in me. (Gal 220)
This is the awakening, the resurrection experience St Paul speaks of when writing to the Ephesians.
“Wake up from your sleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you”.
When we move into the light of the resurrection it is like waking up from a dream, we see things now with fresh eyes and spirits. We are not encumbered with our old self, interested only in selfish endeavours, our concerns now are the concerns of the universal self, immersed in the world of oneness – where there is no separation- where what we do to the one we do to the all.
When we move from the me space to the Christ within and without, our concerns and life choices change. We do not allow ourselves the luxury of despair and assume that nothing can be done in the face of some of the huge problems facing our planet today.
During our Good Friday liturgies we reflected on how Christ’s crucifixion is paralleled in the crucifixion of our home, planet earth by our mindless consumption and exploitation of its precious and fragile forests and eco-systems.
Many people inspire us to move out of the universal Christ space –m people like Ma Yongshun (1914-2000), a Chinese forestry worker, who, during his career, chopped down 36500 trees for China’s development, in a moment of meta-noia and profound change and awakening, he changed his ways and single handedly planted more than 35500 trees starting from the 1960’s. Each spring he would plant trees using his free time before work, after work, during lunch time and after his retirement. Later, at age 78 he recruited the help of his family and thus we was able to fully fulfil his promise to the mountain by planting in total more than 50000 trees. By 1996 he had built a breeding base for trees of high quality. Over his life time, he had inspired many people to help the environment and had taught many people to plant trees.
The Billion Tree Campaign launched in 2006 by the United Nations Environment Programme as a response to the challenges of global warming, is another resurrection story. Its initial target was the planting of one billion trees by the end of 2007. One year later, in 2008, the campaign’s objective was raised to 7 billion trees, a target to be met by the climate change conference that was held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. Three months before the conference, the 7 billion planted trees mark had been surpassed. In December 2011, more than 12 billion trees had been planted.
These two stories encourage us to continue to believe that the crucifixion of our planet will not be its fate.
That collectively people who awaken to their larger, universal self, can act selflessly for the betterment of our planet and all who find a home in her.
Allow me to finish with the Gerard Manley Hopkins Poem I started on Good Friday:-
God’s Grandeur
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the
Bent World broods with warm breast
and with ah!
bright wings.