The Mystery of Christ
The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

by Father Thomas Keating

Chapter 2 Part XII

The Easter-Ascension Mystery

The Women Visit the Tomb

     When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome brought perfumed oils with which they intended to anoint the body of Jesus. Very early, just after sunrise, on the first day of the week they came to the tomb. They were saying to one another, "Who will roll back the stone from the entrance to the tomb for us? When they looked, they found that the stone had been rolled back. (It was a huge one.) On entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, dressed in a white robe. This frightened them thoroughly, but he reassured them? "You need not be amazed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the one who was crucified. He has been raised up; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. Go and tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you to Galilee where you will see him, just as he told you.' "
    They made their way out and fled from the tomb, bewildered and trembling; and because of their great fear, they said nothing to anyone. 
[Mark 16:1 - 8]
Gospel for the Easter Vigil

    In his last moments on the cross Jesus was called upon by the Father to identify himself with the human family in all the consequences of sin. In doing so, Jesus experienced to the utmost degree the sense of alienation from God that is the result of coming to full reflective self-consciousness without the experience of divine union. This process happens to every human being; in the Christian tradition, it is called original sin.

    The alienation that Jesus experienced in his passion caused him to die without the experience of the personal union with the Father that he had enjoyed throughout his earthly life. His holy soul, bearing our sins, descended into the destructive waters of the Great Abyss in order that our sinfulness might be utterly destroyed. Because of Christ's divine power, at the moment that sin was destroyed in the waters of the Great Abyss, these same waters instantly became the waters of eternal life. Christ gave to water the capacity to flow forever in superabundant mercy and to bring forth creatures capable of sharing his divine light, life and love.

    As Christ's soul emerged from the waters made life-giving by the touch of his sacred humanity and re-entered his body, the sacrifice he had offered released within the bosom of the Father an incredible outpouring of divine light, life and love. The fire of the Holy Spirit, bursting with the fullness of divine energy, rushed upon his sacred remains. The perfumed oil of immense weight and value, symbolizing the Spirit, suggests the immense power that the Spirit exerted when the soul of Christ re-entered his body. In this reunion, the Father poured into the risen Jesus the whole of the divine essence--the utter riches, glory, and prerogatives of the divine nature--in a way that is utterly inconceivable to us.

    In the Book of Revelation John tells of his vision of Christ as Lord of the universe: "His feet gleamed like polished brass refined in a furnace." (Rev 1:15) These words suggest that the Spirit glorified the flesh of Jesus until it was melted, so to speak, into divinity. It is this glorified flesh, united to the Eternal Word of God, that has entered into the heart of all creation and become one with all reality.

    The reunion of the body and soul of Jesus took place in the secret of the night just before dawn, a moment that no one saw or witnessed. This is the event that is celebrated during the Paschal Vigil. The first rite of that sacred ceremony, as we saw, is the blessing of the New Fire, the symbol of the Spirit descending upon the precious blood of Christ poured out upon the ground. A spark is taken from the New Fire to light the Paschal Candle, celebrating the moment that Christ rose from the dead in glory. The Paschal Candle is the symbol of the pillar of fire by which God led the Israelites and action is now leading us from sin and disbelief to higher levels of faith and consciousness. The passage of the Israelites through the darkened cloister or church into the sanctuary. The Paschal Candle symbolized the risen Christ leading his people to the promised land of divine transformation. As the single flame atop the Paschal Candle is shared and becomes the possession of each member of the assembly, the whole church is gradually illumined without the original flame being diminished. Divine charity, the ripe fruit of Christ's resurrection, never diminishes; it is increased by being shared. Because of the intrinsic power of the Easter mystery, the Paschal Vigil is not a mere commemoration of Christ's resurrection; it awakens the experience of Christ rising in our inmost being and spreading the fire of his love throughout all our faculties.

    At this point in the celebration of the Paschal Vigil, the great hymn of Easter is sung by the deacon. In this magnificent hymn in honor of the resurrection, we can feel welling up inside of us the enthusiasm of the Christian people of all time.

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes forever! . . .

This is our passover feast, when Christ,
the true Lamb, is slain . . .

This is the night when first you saved our fathers:
You freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin, and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains
of death and rose triumphant from the grave.
What good, indeed, would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us! How boundless your merciful love! To ransom a slave, you gave away your Son.

O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam which gained for us so great a Redeemer! . . .

The power of this night dispels all evil, washes guilt away, and restores lost innocence . . .

O night truly blessed, when heaven is wedded to earth,
and man is reconciled with God!

    After the chanting of the Exultet, everyone is seated and the lessons containing the biblical symbols highlighted by the hymn are explained. Then the Alleluia is sung and the saving presence and power of Christ is applied concretely to the community in the baptism of its catechumens.

    Notice in the hymn there is the statement that this sacred night "restores lost innocence." This phrase, of course, refers to the Garden of Eden and the story of Adam and Eve. It recalls their loss of intimacy with God. The heart of the Easter mystery is our personal discovery of intimacy with God which scripture calls "innocence." It is the innocence arising from easy and continual exchange of the most delightful kind with God. This relationship casts out all fear.

    In order to understand the meaning of scriptural innocence, we must distinguish it from the innocence of ignorance. The innocence of ignorance is the mindlessness that the animal world enjoys, the inability to reflect on oneself or to take responsibility for one's actions. The loss of that kind of innocence does not need to be regretted. Rather, rational consciousness is the greatest achievement of the evolutionary process to date.

    At the same time, there is a sense in which we have known God before. This sense comes from the ontological unconscious, which is God remembering himself in us, so to speak. We have a deep-seated intuition that some indispensable relationship essential for our well-being and happiness is missing. The spiritual journey is a way of remembering our Source, what Meister Eckhart calls the "ground unconscious." The ground unconscious becoming conscious is our awakening to the Mystery of God's presence within us. This is the innocence to which scripture and the Exultet refer.

    Easter is the awakening of divine life in us. "Christ is risen!" is not merely the cry of historical witnesses. It is the cry of all the people of God throughout the centuries who have realized Christ rising in them, not only in the form of emotional enthusiasm, but in the form of unshakable conviction. The light of Christ reveals the fact of our abiding union with him and its potential to transform every aspect of our lives.

More information can be obtained by reading the book The Mystery of Christ by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our Book Store.