HOMILY WEEK 16 01 – Year I
Pilgrimage as an Exodus Journey and Paschal Mystery Experience
(2 Cor 5:14-17; Ps 63; Jn 20:1, 11-18)
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A pilgrimage involves leaving the comforts of home and the familiar, and setting out to a place where two realities meet – either land and sky, like at Kehiwin, or land and water, like at Lac St Anne. The whole pilgrim journey is a prayer for a theophany, an encounter with God.
The readings of the day invite us to make of our lives a pilgrimage into an Exodus Journey and Paschal Mystery experience.
Allow me to explain how this can be done. Years ago Donald came into my office and told me his story: a drunk for years, he sobered up and found the 12 Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. However, he then went on a 4-year dry drunk of organizing round-ups and chairing meetings, not drinking, but also not healing. He was miserable, and so was his family. Finally, he ended up in the hospital, realized he was not working the program, signed himself out, threw away his medication, and started working the Steps. That was when his real recovery began, and now he is enjoying sobriety that is joyous and free. As he left, he asked if we could pray together, which we did.
That memorable visit haunted me for days, until I realized I had heard another similar story before, and so have you – the story of Moses, part of which was in the first reading. What is that story? First, slavery in Egypt for centuries, then liberation – the crossing of the Red Sea we heard in today’s reading. Next came Mt. Sinai and the 10 commandments, their program. Then the people of Israel went on a dry drunk for 40 years in the desert, unfaithful and complaining. There they had to learn to live one day at time (manna in the morning, quail in the evening) and to look at a bronze serpent on a standard that had no poison in it, prefiguring a saviour on the cross who would have no sin, no addiction in him. Once those lessons were learned, they crossed the Jordan and were in the Promised Land.
That story reminded me of another story in the New Testament that we all know, and heard mentioned in the Gospel – the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. When the scribes and Pharisees ask him for a sign, Jesus replies he will give them only the sign of Jonah – as Jonah was in the belly of a whale for three days, so too the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.
What is Jesus’ story? The same stages as that of Donald, yet unique: Passion or suffering, death on the Cross, Resurrection, the appearances to his disciples for 40 days (the missing mystery that we tend to skip over in the creed, the rosary and even in the Eucharist), yet it is an important mystery. Jesus spent 30 days with the disciples, talking to them about the Kingdom of God, but also, I believe, teaching them to mourn and grieve the loss of him as he was among them. That is why he told Mary Magdalene not to cling to him, but to let him ascend to the Father. Then she could receive his Spirit to be with her in a new way. After that Jesus ascended into heaven, and finally sent his Spirit upon the early church at Pentecost.
There is one more story with six similar stages – ours. What is our story? We have been hurt by life – our passion, filling us with anger and resentment. And whenever we are hurt, we suffer loss – our death, filling us with sadness and self-pity. However, we are still here – our resurrection, only we are survivors, often full of guilt and fear because of the way we acted out of our painful emotions instead of dealing with them with forgiveness. But God doesn’t want survivors – he wants thrivers. The appearances become for us a time of mourning and grieving our losses. Many of us are stuck in grief, unable to move on with lives. In one community, a young man took his life one year to the day that his older brother had taken his life. He was stuck in grief. The appearances of Jesus invite us to turn our grief into good grieving.
The next stage for us, the ascension, becomes forgiveness. We learn to forgive anyone who has hurt us in any way, as Jesus did on the Cross, and also to ask forgiveness and make amends to anyone we may have hurt, letting go of our guilt and fear. Moses is our example here as with strong faith he told the people not to be afraid of the whole army of Pharaoh. Finally, we arrive at the new life of serenity, wellness and joy that Jesus wants to share with us.
If we make our lives into an Exodus journey and Paschal Mystery experience, then we will be able to let go of that spiritual burden of anger and resentment, shock and shame, sadness and self-pity, guilt and fear that so many people are carrying.
Jesus as the Messiah came with a two-fold mission – to redeem and to sanctify, to forgive our sins, and to heal our sinfulness – that which makes us sin. We can experience his forgiveness for our sins through the sacrament of reconciliation, and healing of our sinfulness, our painful emotions and negative attitudes, through healing prayer. I like to see this process as a spirituality of weeding. If we settle only for forgiveness, like hoeing a garden, we run the danger of sinning all over again. A weed needs to be taken out by the roots so that it doesn’t grow back. For us that is healing, change and transformation – having God gently pull our weeds out by the roots.
Another way to view this Exodus journey and Paschal Mystery experience is as a Spiritual Spiral. We do not climb a ladder to get to heaven – we journey along life’s path through a series of Paschal Mystery experiences. We find out a painful truth about ourselves, pray about it, deal with it and die to it, a downward movement, and then rise to a new place along the journey. Then another painful truth will emerge, and we go through another passion-death-resurrection cycle, and on and on. What is important is that these circles get smaller and we are always moving upwards, healing as we go in a process of transformation into greater and greater Christlikeness.
The Eucharist is itself a participation in the Exodus journey and Passover of the Chosen people led by Moses, and a participation in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus that began with the Last Supper and ended in resurrection and Pentecost.
So let us strive to be pilgrims, making our lives into an Exodus journey and Paschal Mystery experience, so that, having experienced both forgiveness and healing, we can share that Good News with others.
