Images of Hope

by Joseph Ratzinger

  That was precisely the meaning of the catechumenate by which the early Church led man into contact with the Risen Lord: led by the witnesses step by step to take up the experiment of the path of Jesus, of life with him, and thus life with God. Gregory of Nyssa expressed that magnificently in his interpretation of the mysterious text saying that Moses, to be sure, had been able to see, not the face of God, but his back. To this he says, “To the one who asks about everlasting life, the Lord answered. . . ‘Come, follow me!’ (Lk 18:22). But whoever follows sees the back of the one he follows. And now Moses, who demands to see God, is instructed how to see God. To follow God wherever he leads is to see God.”

  The Easter bells invite us to this path. Again and again they meet man in the night. But where they touch the heart, night gives way to morning, darkness dissolves and becomes day. Even today. In this promise lies the joy of Easter.

  Easter

  ______

  Sarah’s Laughter

  The lightness and joy that most of us associate with the idea of Easter do not alter the fact that the inner significance of this day is far harder for us to appreciate than, for instance, the meaning of Christmas. Birth, childhood, the family—all this is part of our own experience. We are immediately attracted by the idea that God became a child, making little things great, rendering great things human, tangible, and close to us. According to our faith, God has stepped into the world in the birth at Bethlehem, and this causes a ray of light to fall even on those who cannot accept the message as such.

  In the case of Easter it is different. Here, God has not entered into our familiar life; on the contrary, he has broken through its limitations and entered a new realm beyond death. Here, he does not enter into our pattern of life but goes before us into a vast, unknown expanse, holding the torch aloft to encourage us to follow him. However, since we are acquainted only with things on this side of death, there is nothing in our experience we can link with these tidings. We have no ideas to come to the aid of the words; we are feeling our way blindly in unknown territory and are painfully aware of our short-sightedness and cramped footsteps.

  It is thrilling, all the same, to learn, at least from the lips of someone who knows, of things that are of the greatest importance to all of us. Recent years have revealed a tremendous curiosity in the reports of people who have been clinically dead, who claim to have experienced what is beyond experience and seem to be able to speak of what lies behind the dark door of death. This inquisitiveness shows that the question of death is a burning topic to everyone. All these accounts leave us unsatisfied, however, because, after all, the people concerned were not really dead; they only underwent the special experience associated with a particular, extreme condition of human life and consciousness. No one can say whether their experience would have been confirmed had they been really dead. But he of whom Easter speaks—Jesus Christ—really “descended into hell”. Jesus actually complied with the suggestion of the rich man: Let someone come back from the dead, and we will believe (Lk 16:27f.)! He, the true Lazarus, did come back so that we may believe. And do we? He did not come back with disclosures or with exciting prospects of the “world beyond”. But he did tell us that he is “going to prepare a place” for us (Jn 14:2-3). Is this surely not the most exciting news in the whole of history, though it is presented without any fanfare?

  Easter is concerned with something unimaginable. Initially, the event of Easter comes to us solely through the word, not through the senses. So it is all the more important for us to be won over by the immensity of this word. Because, however, we can think only by employing sense images, the faith of the Church has always translated the Easter message into symbols that point to things the word cannot express. The symbol of light (including the fire) plays a special part; the praise of the Paschal candle—a symbol of life in the midst of the darkened church—is actually praise of him who proved victor over death. Thus the event of long ago is translated into our present time: where light conquers darkness, something of the Resurrection takes place. The blessing of water focuses on another element of creation, used as a symbol of the Resurrection: water can be a threat, a weapon of death. But living spring water means fruitfulness, building oases of life in the middle of the desert. Then there is a third symbol of a very different kind: the sung Alleluia, the solemn singing of the Paschal liturgy, shows that the human voice, as well as crying, groaning, lamenting, speaking, can also sing. Moreover, the fact that man is able to summon the voices of creation and transform them into harmony—does this not give us a marvelous intimation of the transformations that we, too, with creation, can undergo?

  Is it not a wonderful sign of that hope which enables us to anticipate what is to come and also to receive it here and now? Nor is the season at which Easter is celebrated a chance matter, either. Via the Jewish Passover, the Christian Easter has its roots far back in the history of religions, in the realm of the so-called natural religions. I am always struck by the emphasis Jesus places during his earthly journey on his “hour”. He is going toward his death, but he avoids it until this hour has come (see, for instance, Lk 13:31-35). In this way he quite deliberately links his mission with mankind’s whole history of belief and with the signs to be found in creation. He ties the accomplishment of his mission to this particular feast and, hence, to the first full moon of spring. To those who look at things only from the point of view of technology or historicism, this must appear unintelligible and devoid of meaning. But Jesus thought otherwise. By linking his hour to the revolutions of the moon and the earth, to the cycles of nature, he situates his death in a cosmic context and, conversely, relates the cosmos to man. In the Church’s great festivals, creation, too, joins in; or rather, in these festivals we enter into the rhythm of the earth and the heavenly bodies and hear the message they have to give. Thus nature’s new morning that marks the first full moon of spring is also a sign belonging genuinely to the Easter message: creation speaks of us and to us. We can understand ourselves, and Christ, properly only if we also learn how to listen to the voice of creation.

  Today, however, I want to direct our attention to that symbol which was at the center of the Jewish Passover and thus naturally became the core of the Church’s Easter symbolism, namely, the Paschal Lamb. It is remarkable how important a part is played in the Bible by the image of the lamb. We come across it in the very first pages, in the account of the sacrifice of Abel, the shepherd; and in the last book of Holy Scripture the Lamb is at the very center of heaven and earth. According to the Book of Revelation, the Lamb alone can open the seals of history. It is the Lamb, who appears as slain and yet lives, who receives the homage of all creatures in heaven and earth. The lamb that lets itself be killed without complaint is a symbol of meekness: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Mt 5:5). The Lamb with his mortal wound tells us that, in the end, it is not those who kill who will be the victors; on the contrary, the world is sustained by those who sacrifice themselves. It is the sacrifice of him who becomes the “Lamb slain” that holds heaven and earth together. True victory lies in this sacrifice. It gives rise to that life which imparts a meaning to history, through all its atrocities, and which can finally turn them into a song of joy.

  It is not through these passages, however, that I have come to realize the significance of the image of the lamb, but rather through that most puzzling story in the Bible which continues to scandalize its readers and thus spurs us on to a deeper questioning about God and can lead us to a better understanding of his mystery. I refer to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. As he climbs the mountain, he sees that there is no animal for the sacrifice. He asks his father about this and is told that “God will provide” (Gen 22:8). Not until the very moment when Abraham lifts up his knife to slay Isaac do we grasp how truly he spoke: a ram is caught in a thicket and takes the place of Isaac as a sacrifice. Jewish thought continually returned to that mysterious moment when Isaac lay bound on the altar. Often enough, Israel was obliged to recog
nize its own situation in that of Isaac, bound and ready for the fatal knife, and was thus heartened to try to understand its own destiny. In Isaac, Israel had, as it were, meditated upon the truth of the words “God will provide.” Jewish tradition tells that, at the moment when Isaac uttered a cry of terror, the heavens opened and the boy saw the invisible mysteries of creation and the angelic choirs. This is connected with another tradition, according to which it was Isaac who created Israel’s rite of worship; thus the Temple was built, not on Sinai, but on Moriah. It is as though all worship originates in this glimpse on the part of Isaac—in what he then saw and afterward communicated. Finally, in this connection, there are various interpretations of the name Isaac, which contains the root “laughter”. First of all, the Bible sees in the name an allusion to the sad, unbelieving laughter of Abraham and Sarah, who would not believe that they could still have a son (cf. Gen 17:17; 18:12). But once the promise comes true, it turns into joyful laughter; crabbed loneliness is dissolved in the joy of fulfillment (Gen 21:6). Later tradition refers the laughter no longer only to Isaac’s parents but to Isaac himself. And indeed, had he not grounds for laughter when the tension of mortal fear suddenly disappeared at the sight of the trapped ram, which solved the riddle? Did he not have cause to laugh when the sad and gruesome drama—the ascent of the mountain, his father binding him—suddenly had an almost comic conclusion, yet one that brought liberty and redemption? This was a moment in which it was shown that the history of the world is not a tragedy, the inescapable tragedy of opposing forces, but “divine comedy”. The man who thought he had breathed his last was able to laugh.

  Just as Jewish tradition continually returned to the story of Isaac, the Church Fathers also simply could not put this story down. They, too, asked what Isaac experienced at that final moment when he lay bound on the firewood. What did he see? Their answer is simpler and more realistic than that of the Jewish scholars. They say quite simply: He saw the ram that took his place and thus, at that moment, “redeemed” him. He saw the ram that thenceforward became the center of the Jewish cult as a whole. The Fathers, too, say that the Jewish cult ultimately aims to continue and to preserve the experience of that moment; it aims to achieve redemption by substitution. And they, too, are aware that Isaac, on seeing the ram, had good reason for laughing; the sight of the ram gave him back the laughter he had so recently lost.

  The Fathers go one step farther, however. Isaac saw the ram: that is, he saw the sign of what was to come, of him who was to come as the Lamb. Seeing the lamb, he had caught sight of him who, for our sake, allowed himself to be caught in the thicket of history, who for our sake let himself be bound, who took our place and is our redemption. To that extent, according to the Fathers, Isaac did actually have a glimpse of heaven. His sight of this ram was a view of heaven opened. For in it he saw the God who provides and who stands waiting on the very threshold of death. In seeing the ram he saw the God who not only provides but provides himself in becoming the Lamb, so that man may become man and may live. When Isaac caught sight of the ram in this last moment, he saw exactly what, on Patmos, John saw in the opened heavens. John describes it thus: “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. . . . And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, ‘To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!’ ” (Rev 5:6, 13). Isaac’s sight of the lamb showed him what cult is: God himself provides his cult, through which he releases and redeems man, and gives him back the laughter of joy that becomes creation’s hymn of praise.

  Now you might say, what concern of ours are the Church Fathers and Jewish stories? Well, I do not think it is difficult to see that the Isaac of whom we are speaking is we ourselves. We climb up the mountain of time, bearing with us the instruments of our own death. At first the goal is far distant. We do not think of it; the present is enough: the morning on the mountain, the song of the birds, the sun’s brightness. We feel we do not need to know about our destination, since the way itself is enough. But the longer it grows, the more unavoidable the question becomes: Where is it going? What does it all mean? We look with apprehension at the signs of death that, up to now, we had not noticed, and the fear rises within us that perhaps the whole of life is only a variation of death; that we have been deceived and that life is actually not a gift at all but an imposition. Then the strange reply, “God will provide”, sounds more like an excuse than an explanation. Where this view predominates, where talk of “God” is no longer believable, humor dies. In such a case man has nothing to laugh about anymore; all that is left is a cruel sarcasm or that rage against God and the world with which we are all acquainted. But the person who has seen the Lamb—Christ on the Cross—knows that God has provided. The heavens are not opened, none of us has seen the “invisible mysteries of creation and the angelic choirs”. All we can see is—like Isaac—the Lamb, of whom the Apostle Peter says that he was destined before the foundation of the world (1 Pet 1:20). But this sight of the Lamb—the crucified Christ—is in fact our glimpse of heaven, of what God has eternally provided for us. In this Lamb we actually do glimpse heaven, and we see God’s gentleness, which is neither indifference nor weakness but power of the highest order. It is in this way, and only thus, that we see the mysteries of creation and catch a little of the song of the angels—indeed, we can try to join with them, somewhat, in singing the Alleluia of Easter Day. Because we see the Lamb, we can laugh and give thanks; from him we also realize what adoration is.

  Let us come back to the Church Fathers. As we have seen, they discerned, in the lamb, an anticipation of Jesus. Moreover, they say that Jesus is both the lamb and Isaac. He is the lamb who allowed himself to be caught, bound, and slain. He is also Isaac, who looked into heaven; indeed, where Isaac saw only signs and symbols, Jesus actually entered heaven, and since that time the barrier between God and man is broken down. Jesus is Isaac, who, risen from the dead, comes down from the mountain with the laughter of joy in his face. All the words of the Risen One manifest this joy—this laughter of redemption: If you see what I see and have seen, if you catch a glimpse of the whole picture, you will laugh! (cf. Jn 16:20).

  In the Baroque period the liturgy used to include the risus paschalis, the Easter laughter. The Easter homily had to contain a story that made people laugh, so that the church resounded with a joyful laughter. That may be a somewhat superficial form of Christian joy. But is there not something very beautiful and appropriate about laughter becoming a liturgical symbol? And is it not a tonic when we still hear, in the play of cherub and ornament in baroque churches, that laughter which testified to the freedom of the redeemed? Surely it is a sign of an Easter faith when Haydn remarked, concerning his church compositions, that he felt a particular joy when thinking of God: “As I came to utter the words of supplication, I could not suppress my joy but loosed the reins of my elated spirits and wrote ‘allegro’ over the Miserere, and so on”?

  The Book of Revelation’s vision of heaven expresses what we see by faith at Easter: the Lamb who was slain lives. Since he lives, our weeping comes to an end and is transformed into laughter (cf. Rev 5:4f.). When we look at the Lamb, we see heaven opened. God sees us, and God acts, albeit differently from the way we think and would like him to act. Only since Easter can we really utter the first article of faith; only on the basis of Easter is this profession rich and full of consolation: I believe in God, the Father Almighty. For it is only from the Lamb that we know that God is really Father, really Almighty. No one who has grasped that can ever be utterly despondent and despairing again. No one who has grasped that will ever succumb to the temptation to side with those who kill the Lamb. No one who has understood this will know ultimate fear, even if he gets into the situation of the Lamb. For there he is in the safest possible place.

  Easter, therefore, invites us not only to listen to Jesus but
also, as we do so, to develop our interior sight. This greatest festival of the Church’s year encourages us, by looking at him who was slain and is risen, to discover the place where heaven is opened. If we comprehend the message of the Resurrection, we recognize that heaven is not completely sealed off above the earth. Then—gently and yet with immense power—something of the light of God penetrates our life. Then we shall feel the surge of joy for which, otherwise, we wait in vain. Everyone who is penetrated by something of this joy can be, in his own way, a window through which heaven can look upon earth and visit it. In this way, what Revelation foresees can come about: every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the world, is filled with the joy of the redeemed (cf. Rev 5:13). To the extent that we realize this, the words of the departing Jesus—who, parting from us, is the coming Jesus—are fulfilled: “Your sorrow will turn into joy” (Jn 16:20). And, like Sarah, people who share an Easter faith can say: “God has made me laugh; every one who hears will laugh with me” (Gen 21:6).