Happy Easter! Christ has risen, Alleluia!
Easter Sunday marks the end of darkness, which represents
our sinful life, and the fresh beginning of new light, which symbolizes our new
life in Christ. As the darkness of night gave its way to the light of rising
sun that breaks this Easter day, the darkness of our past sinful life was
replaced with the new light of the risen Christ. This is the day that the Lord
has made (Psalm 118:24) to as demarcation not only in Paschal Mystery but also
our life.
On this day, we wake up to become a new person in Christ, as
the Lord has risen very early in the morning.
While we are now transformed, we have also left our past – our past sinful life
style.
Do you recall
God saying, “Remember not the events of the past”(Isaiah 43:18) from the 5th
Sunday of Lent first reading?
I explained that this is not meant that God
want us to have amnesia about our past but rather not to be attached to and
obsessed with our past, applying Buddhist wisdom. If we had become attached to the past, we
would not be able to move forward as such a condition would be like trying to
drive a car while your left foot firmly pressing the brake pedal.
Though we are
moving forward with time – from the past to the present, further into the
future, this journey of becoming a new person in Christ is actually
“returning”. In saying “returning”, it may sound like going “backward”. But, I
just indicated that Easter is about moving forward, leaving the past sinful
life behind, as Jesus left his burial cloths in the empty tomb.
“Moving
forward” and “returning” seem to be contradictory to each other. But, becoming
a new person in Christ on Easter really means “returning” – returning to God. This journey of us is a God’s desire
Remember, speaking
of “returning”, I pointed out Dr. Jose DeMesa’s concept of “pagbabalik-loob” to explain conversion in
connection with a prodigal son’s return home (Luke 15: 11-32) in my blog on
March 8, 2013 ? As the prodigal son
returned to his merciful father, we , the believers, return to our merciful God
for our conversion.
To return to
God, we have turned the direction of our journey during Lent, from sinful
temptations’ directions to God’s direction.
We have spent our Lenten period to recognize our past wrong direction,
by repenting, and to turn our direction from sin to God so that we may
experience Easter conversion.
In repenting
our past sin, which crucified Jesus, and
returning to God for His forgiveness and mercy, awaiting Christ’s resurrection
with hope, we recalled these words of God during Easter vigil Mass:
“I will
take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring
you back to your own soil. I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you
clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I
will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will
remove the heart of stone from your flesh and tie you a heart of flesh. I will
put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances,
and keep them.” (Ezekiel 36:24-27)
The above
words of God make it clear that God want us to be with Him and in Him. For this
desire of God for us, in response to our sins and consequences of sins, we
repent and realize our deep heart’s desire to be with God, again. Thus, we turn our hearts from temptations
back to God. Then, we begin journeying back to God to become a new person, by
getting sprinkled with God’s clean water, to obtain a new pure heart. For this, Jesus died and resurrected by
leaving behind an empty tomb and burial cloths.
A
corresponding hymn to the above reading from Ezekiel is Psalm 42. In this, we
express our heart’s desire: As a deer
longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts
for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God?(vv.
2-3).
This segment
from Psalm echoes the heart of repenting sinners, like the heart of a prodigal
son in Luke 15:11-32. Psalm 42 is a
lamentation of the Israelites and a poetic expression of their longing to be
delivered from enemy’s snare and to restore their relationship with God.
With such our
desire to return to God, delivered from the snare of sins (Psalm 42: 2-3) , and
God’s desire to have us back with him (Ezekiel 36:24-27), we make our “pagbabalik-loob”, conversion of our
heart to God, turning our heart to God, as Jose DeMesa would say, by
repenting. Psychologically, this
conversion journey of our heart from sin to God for us to be transformed on
Easter echoes these words of St. Augustine of Hippo: My heart is restless until it rests you (God).
In returning
to God, while we move ahead by leaving our sinful past behind, as Jesus left
his burial cloths in the tomb, we are making Eastern conversion to be
transformed. As the Jesus’ burial cloths
signify his death, now so does our sins.
In order to pass over Holy Week Triduum into Easter, we have died with
our sins. Now, we have left our sinful past behind to celebrate the day of
Christ’s resurrection as we are transformed, with our heart find its
restfulness in God, as Jesus has resurrected.
If you have
thought that Linus, who never let his dirty stinky blanket go, in Charles Schulz’s
“Peanuts” cartoon, has some psychological problem, then, you can easily imagine
that waking up on Easter morning with your old sinful habit is like Linus
carrying his blanket, keeping the old yeast to contaminate the new dough.
In the eyes of
clinical psychology, Linus’ obstinate clinging to his dirty and stinky blanket
is for his emotional security. It is a emotional security blanket for him as he
does not seem to find peace of mind with anything else. This pathological
pattern is very similar to how substance abusers find comfort in alcohol and
drugs. From a stand point of developmental psychopathology, Linus’ blanket
problem can be due to an attachment disorder.
In the eyes of
Paul, clinging problems like Linus’ attachment to his blanket, must be the
inability to get rid of “old yeast”. In the Epistle
reading for Easter Mass, Paul says, “Clear out the old yeast, so that you may
become a fresh batch of dough, in as much as you are unleavened”(1 Corinthians
5:7). Here, the old yeast means our old sinful habit. Just as the old yeast can
spoil the fresh batch of dough, our sinful old habits may corrupt our new life
in the risen Christ. Thus, we must detach ourselves from and leave behind our
own old yeast, old sinful habit, in the” tomb” we left.
In observing
the Pesach (Passover) festival,
the Jewish folks get rid of all leaven breads out of their homes before only
unleavened breads can be eaten during this festival, as said in Leviticus
23:6-8. Having any leavened bread is not kosher for Pesach. Likewise, failure to get rid of “old yeast” –
our past sinful life style, on Easter is not “kosher”, either. In other words, our attachment to our past
sinful habits and life style will not let us become “kosher” to celebrate
Easter.
Speaking of
attachment, Buddhist wisdom is very helpful in overcoming its problem, which is
perpetual restlessness, called kleshas(煩悩). Of course, what Buddhist calls attachment is
not the same as a healthy attachment process that a child forms with his
primary caregiver, usually a biological mother.
John Bowlby’s attachment psychology theory considers that a child who
has developed a healthy attachment process is less likely to be clinging and
dependent because such a child is likely to be emotionally secure.
What is
considered as clinging and dependent in psychology, are manifestations of the
psychological state of insecurity in clinical psychology, which corresponds to
what is considered as attachment, a significant contribution to kleshas in Buddhism.
What St.
Augustine calls “restless” means what Buddhism calls “kleshas”. While St. Augustine says a cure for restlessness is metanoia (turning our heart from sin to
God) or ,to put it in DeMesa’s Filipino theology, pagbabalik-loob. In turning our heart to God, we sure do not need
anything like Linus’ security blanket,
our sinful habit from the past. We must
journey forward light as we travel
without baggage from our sinful past.
This is the way to journey into the Easter light of the rising and risen
Christ.
As Christ’s
rising was like a sunrise, the Church has received the new light from the new
Paschal Candle. During Easter Vigil
Mass, we pass and spread the candle lights to each other from the new
Paschal Candle, the darkness has given its way to the new life of Christ. This is a very important symbolic image to
live our renewed Easter life because we now must pass the light of the risen
Christ to each other as we reach out to one another. The light of the risen Christ we pass on,
like passing the candle light from the new Paschal Candle, is how we share
God’s grace and our love with one another. This is to practice these words of
Jesus, “This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you”(John
16:12), spoken during the Last Supper discourse.
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