Transcript of Abbot Clement's Homily at the Easter Vigil Mass, April 10, 2004
For many years I decoupaged Icons. I enjoyed the Easter Icon of the Eastern Church for it was different. It does not show the Risen Lord bursting from the grave, suspended in a brilliant divine glory above the world. Since Scripture itself does not describe the Resurrection event, Eastern believers also refrained from depicting the Resurrection. The icon represents as it were the mysterious inner dimension of the Easter event indicated with a few words which we profess in our creed: "He descended into hell". The icon focuses on Jesus' victory. He is depicted as having shattered the bolt of this world, torn its gates from their hinges. He is the strong man who has opened and penetrated the domain of death. He has burst the impregnable fortress of death, such that death is now no longer a place of no return. Its doors are open. There is Christ in the aura of his wounded love. He stands in this doorway; He addresses the still sleeping Adam and takes him by the hand to lead him forth.
St. Epiphanius has Jesus say to Adam: "I am your God, yet I have become your son. I am in you, and you are in me. We together are a single, indivisible person." Thus it is clear that Adam is not the Adam of the book of genesis but you and me. Having taken on human nature, Jesus is now present in human flesh, and we are present in him, the Son. St. Epiphanius has Jesus say: "Awake, 0 sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. I have not created you to be in prison. I did not make you for the dungeon."
This statement of Christ contains the whole Christian message of Easter. For the prison that Christ opens is depicted as being anywhere. Like the theologian who said: "Christ descended into hell when he spoke with Caiaphas." In other words a prison is wherever we are alienated from ourselves. It can be anywhere and everywhere.
And what is characteristic of this prison? Surely the deprivation of freedom and at a deeper level^whenever we are denied normal fellowship and relationship with others. As the Bishop's Conference in Puebia stated: fellowship and participation is necessary for liberation. These two elements give substance to men. Where they are cut off, our selfhood is denied us. Yet if we stress these and exclude a third fundamental element which is in fact the first fundamental need, real freedom is never free. Epiphanius' words: "Awake ... and Christ shall give you light", captures the issue. Ancient prisons were holes of darkness. So for the human person, real alienation, unfreedom and imprisonment consists in our lack of truth. Without the truth man does not know who he is, why he is here and what the reality of the world consists in, he is stumbling in the dark. He is a prisoner. Without this right to the truth which is also a right to God all other human rights are not enough. Without the right to truth and God man becomes degraded to the level of a mere creature of needs. And the deep darkness and alienation of our times is shown in the fact that we have powers and abilities but do not know what they are for; we have so much knowledge that we are no longer able to believe and see the Truth. We are no longer able to embrace the totality of things. So like Pilate we ask what is truth, and like Pilate we mean there is no truth and only idiots and fanatics imagine they have it or argue about it.
"I did not create you for the dungeon. Arise and Christ shall give you light." These words of Christ to Adam that is to each and everyone of us, expresses the fact that Easter is the victory in which Jesus Christ breaks down the walls of alienation and leads us out of our dark prisons into the open air of truth. Heard already in baptism, truth speaks to us and shows us the way to freedom. Easter invites us to return to our Baptism, to seize the hand of Truth which reaches out to lead us to the light.
"Arise, Christ shall give you light." Liberation and restoration is our continual and fresh acceptance of truth as the path of life set before us. For Christ is the Truth
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"I did not create you for the dungeon". In this Easter hour when we renew our baptismal promises let us ask the Lord to visit the dungeons of this world. Let us invite him into all the prisons that are hushed up by propaganda which knows no truth. Let us ask him to enter the prisons of this age, into the darkness of our lack of truth. Let us ask him to open our hearts to reveal himself as the Victor who tears down the gates and says to us: "I, your God, have become your Son. Come out! I have not created you to be a prison.
In his play "No Exit" Jean Paul Satre portrays man as a being who is hopelessly trapped. He sums up his gloomy picture of man in the words, "Hell is other people." If this were true then hell is everywhere, and there is no exit, the doors are everywhere closed.
Christ says to us, "I am your God. I have become your Son. Come out! Here we have the exact opposite and the truth: heaven is other people. As St Epiphanius put on the lips of Christ: I am in you and you are in me. Christ summons us to find heaven in him, and then to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here. Jesus stretches out his hand to us in his Easter message, so that Easter may be now, so that the light of heaven may shine forth in this world and its doors may be opened. We only need to take his hand!