by Albert Holtz
One of the doors at the rear of the church opened quietly and three people came in and slipped into a back pew.
With his love for double meanings, John would continue this image of “lifting up” later on, in Jesus’ ambiguous promise, “And when I am lifted up [hupso] from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself” (John 12:32–34). Did this “being lifted up” refer to Christ’s being literally lifted up onto the cross, or to his finally being lifted up in glory to the right hand of God in heaven? Or did it refer to both at the same time? John’s deliberate ambiguity pointed up the mysterious nature of the crucifixion and of all human suffering. But he also gave us a central insight about human suffering when he wrote that, by being lifted up on the cross, Christ “draws all to himself” (John 12:32–33): Calvary was just the first step in a process. After being “lifted up” onto the cross Jesus would then be “lifted up” out of death by his Father and finally raised on high to sit at the right hand of the Father. And—here is the crucial point—we too are to be lifted up along with him as he draws us all to himself.
As I scanned the faces in the pews, I was encouraged by the number of interested expressions. I could sense that they were listening and, I hoped, starting to get the point of my sermon: the link between our own suffering and Christ’s triumphing over his suffering and death on the cross.
John, by playing on the double meaning of “lifted up,” deftly links our human suffering with the mystery of Calvary, and then, with the cross as the starting point, describes a single upward surge in which all of creation—including our darkest valleys of sin and suffering—is embraced by Christ and lifted heavenward by him and with him in the vast, infinite, and inexorable power of divine unconditional love.
Thus, Christ’s cross becomes the very means by which all of us, too, are lifted to salvation. Suffering is a mysterious but somehow integral part of the ceaseless upward movement of divine love.
I then shared with the congregation a powerful image that had come to me early that very morning as I was praying over what to say in that sermon. My vision began with the now too-familiar image of the Twin Towers collapsing amid billows of dust and smoke, but it didn’t end there: When the collapsing buildings had crashed into the earth there was a momentary pause, and the whole world fell silent, as if in shock. Then slowly the towers began to be lifted back up, and then all of Manhattan started to be drawn upward after them in a single mighty surge. Next the entire New York metropolitan area, including Newark and Queen of Angels church, was swept upward, then the whole country, until finally the whole world with all its misery and pain, all of its sin and suffering, began to be lifted heavenward as well, caught up in the relentless, irresistible power of Christ’s infinite, unconditional, and universal love. He was keeping his promise: “When I am lifted up [hupso] from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
“Yes!” said a voice in the congregation. “All right!” agreed a member of the choir.
Heartened by their responses, I continued, telling how this vision had filled me with confidence and peace, and that I hoped that it might do the same for someone in the church that morning.
We are not able, I went on, to understand right now just how it is that the evil and suffering of our lives or the terror and the tragedy of the past week all fit into the picture, and so we pray that we may be blessed with the eyes of faith when we look upon our troubled times—just as when we look upon a crucifix. With those eyes and with the help of John’s beautiful image we may be able to see that we and our dark valleys, and indeed the whole world and its struggles, are continuously being “lifted up” by Christ in that single inevitable heavenward motion, a motion that will finally be completed on that day when all creation has been transformed, and every tear wiped away, and when every evil has been overcome and every pain forgotten amid the eternal joys of heaven.
“Amen!” came a comment. “Thank you Jesus!” someone else prayed.
As I left the pulpit, my pulse still racing with the emotion of preaching, I realized just how much I had needed to hear that sermon myself. I whispered a word of thanks to the Lord as I took my seat in the celebrant’s chair.
“That prayer over the preacher,” I thought to myself, “is pretty powerful stuff.”
Reflection
1. Think of a time of particularly intense suffering in your life. Were you eventually able to get some perspective on the situation? If so, what was it? Where did it come from?
2. The traditional Catholic practice of “offering up” the day’s little inconveniences and sufferings is a way of consciously connecting your own tribulations to those of Jesus on Calvary. What small “suffering” might you offer today?
Sacred Scripture
One sentence that combines perfectly Christ’s crucifixion and his exaltation in that single, upward movement of salvation is John 8:28: “Jesus said (to them), ‘When you lift up [hupso] the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM.’ ”9
Similar passages worth looking at are: Isa 52:13–15; Acts 5:30–31; and Rom 8:18–23.
Wisdom of the Desert
Abba Euprepios said, “Knowing that God is faithful and mighty, have faith in him and you will share what is his. If you are depressed, you do not believe. We all believe that he is mighty and believe that everything is possible to him. As for your own affairs, believe with faith in him about them, too, for he is able to work miracles in you also.10
24. Rising to New Life
THE LATE MORNING SUN WAS FLOODING through the stained-glass windows into the abbey church, covering the oak floor with glowing smudges of blue, red, and gold. Everyone was kneeling during the Litany of the Saints except for one young monk who was lying face down in the middle of the sanctuary. He was preparing to profess solemn monastic vows. We were all calling on the saints to help him to remain strong and faithful in his commitment to search for God with us in Newark Abbey for the rest of his life.
“Saint John the Baptist, Pray for us.”
“Saint Joseph, Pray for us.”
“Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Pray for us.”
The ceremony had begun with an invitation from the Abbot: “My son, through baptism you have already died to sin and been consecrated to the Lord. Are you resolved to unite yourself more closely to him by the bond of solemn profession?”
Since the early days of monasticism, spiritual writers have spoken of monastic profession as a “second baptism.” In baptism every Christian enters into the paschal mystery—Christ’s passage through suffering and death to return to the Father—but the monk in professing his vows promises to live his baptismal promises in a more intense way, renouncing Satan and dying to himself through the practices of obedience, voluntary poverty, self-denial, and so forth.
I smiled as I remembered my own solemn vows ceremony when I had to lie prostrate in prayer. Back then there was an even clearer connection between professing vows, and dying and rising in baptism: I was actually covered, as I lay there, with a funeral pall, and six funeral candles were arranged around me while the litany was chanted.
Suddenly I was back in the present and the cantors were coming to the end of the litany:
“By your death and rising to new life, Lord, save your people.”
“By your gift of the Holy Spirit, Lord, save your people.”
After the litany the abbot stood up and prayed, “Lord, grant the prayers of your people. Prepare the heart of your servant for consecration to your service. By the grace of the Holy Spirit purify him from all sin and set him on fire with your love. We ask this through Christ our Lord.”
As we answered “Amen” it struck me that this oration contained more baptismal language: the forgiveness of sins and the pouring out of the Spirit.
The deacon then said, “Let us rise,” and everyone stood. The monk who had been lying on the floor got to his knees and then stood up. As I watched him rise to his feet I couldn’t help thinking of that rich New Testament word egeir.11 Its first meaning is a sim
ple one, describing exactly what this monk had just done: “to rise up.” For example, after being warned by an angel, “Joseph got up [egeir], took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt” (Matthew 2:14). But the young monk’s gesture of rising up after the litany was, like the word egeir and like the vows ceremony itself, rich with overtones of resurrection. Egeir’s Easter implications come across in many of Jesus’ miracles.
First, egeir is often connected with Jesus’ healing miracles. For instance, he said to the paralytic, “‘Stand up [egeir], take your bed and go to your home.’ And he stood up [egeir] and went to his home” (Matthew 9:6–7).12
Second and more importantly, the word is always used when Jesus raises someone from the dead. When he saw the funeral procession of the widow’s son near Naim, “he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise [egeir]!’ ” (Luke 7:14); and when he saw the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus lying dead “He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘ Talitha cum, which means, ‘Little girl, get up [egeir]!’ And immediately the girl got up [egeir] and began to walk about” (Mark 5:41).13 The gospel writers very deliberately choose egeir to describe people “rising” from sickness and even death because they want us to see these events as foreshadowing that one greatest “arising” that will happen on Easter Sunday morning.
This brings us to the third and principal use of the verb: egeir is the evangelists’ preferred word for Jesus’ own “rising” and “being raised” from the grave. In Matthew’s version, when the women went to the tomb early on Easter morning and found it empty, an angel who was sitting there said to them, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised [egeir], as he said” (Matt 28:5–6). Matthew had indeed shown Jesus predicting this very event several times: “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering . . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised [egeir]” (Matthew 16:21).14 And John, too, tells us that “after he was raised [egeir] from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:22). The word egeir is then at the very center of our Easter faith.
Now at last it was time for the monk to approach the abbot, holding the vow formula which he had written out by his own hand. He knelt down and read the formula from the sheet: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. . . . I promise with solemn vows, before God and his saints, in the presence of our Father in Christ, Abbot Melvin and the monks of this monastery, stability in this community, pursuit of perfect charity through a monastic manner of life, and obedience according to the Rule of our holy father Benedict. . . .”
Just as our community kept watch in this very place every Holy Saturday during the Easter Vigil, remembering the death of Christ and celebrating his glorious rising from the grave, so this morning this young monk was promising to be always on watch, embracing with joy the renunciations of monastic observance in order to die to himself, to live in body and soul the life of the risen Lord in the hope of one day “rising up” with Christ into the presence of the Father.
Matthew uses egeir in a striking prophetic image of our own rising as he describes the moment of Jesus’ death on Calvary: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised [egeir] (Matthew 27:52).
The new monk was claiming by his actions that egeir applied not only to Christ’s resurrection, but to his own as well. He was living out what Saint Paul had written to the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised [egeir] from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–4).
Having finished his public profession of vows, the newly professed monk now walked slowly to the altar and placing the vow formula on the book of the gospels, signed the document.
Everyone applauded as the young man finished signing his name. As I joined in the applause I prayed for him and for our monastery and for everyone in the church that morning, that we all might keep on “rising up” day after day from our failures, mistakes, and weaknesses of body and spirit. I prayed, too, that one day we might all finally arrive together in the presence of the eternal, risen, and victorious Christ to join in the new life of the eternal Easter in heaven.
Reflection
1. The gospel writers made a connection between Christ’s “rising” at the resurrection and people’s “rising” after being cured of some disease. Have you ever experienced some sort a “rising,” a resurrection in your life? Was there another person involved in calling you to life?
2. Christ always uses a simple word or words to call people back to life. Think of someone you may have helped to “arise” from sadness or worry or pessimism by your words of encouragement.
Sacred Scripture
Egeir, “to get up” is found in Matt 9:19 and Rom 13:11. In the sense of “rising from the dead,” it is found in many places, including John 5:21; 1 Cor 15:17; and 2 Cor 4:14.
Rule of Benedict
Let us get up then, at long last, for the scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us to arise from sleep (Prologue, v. 8).
1. Martus (mar´-toos; plural marturoi) means “witness”; the verb form is marturomai (mar-too´-rom-ahee), “testify, be a witness.” The noun marturia (mar-tooree´- ah) means “testimony.”
2. Acts uses martus at least ten more times to refer to members of the early church, without reference to anyone’s being killed for the faith (see the list in the Sacred Scripture section at the end of this chapter).
3. Benedicta Ward, ed., The Desert of the Heart (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 28.
4. Chara (khar-ah´).
5. Verb forms are chair (khah´-ee-ro), “rejoice, be glad” and charito, (khar-eeto´- o), “to favor someone,” and nouns are chara (khar-ah´), “joy, delight” and charis (khar-ees´), “grace; favor.”
6. See the Sacred Scripture at the end of this chapter for a complete list.
7. Hupso (hoop-so´-oh), “to lift up, exalt, elevate to a place of honor,” from huper, “above.”
8. This a reference to the story in Numbers 21:4–9 in which Moses fashions a bronze serpent so that the Israelites who are being punished by being bitten by “fiery serpents” can gaze on the bronze figure and be healed.
9. The expression “I AM” is a reference to Ex 3:14 in which God answers Moses’ question, “Who shall I say sent me?” The answer is, in one translation, “Tell them ‘I AM’ sent you.” Jesus applies this divine name to himself in several other places in John’s gospel.
10. Benedicta Ward, ed., The Desert of the Heart (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 60.
11. Egeir (eg-i´-ro), “to awaken, rise up, stand up.”
12. Another example is, “When Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever; he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up [egeir] and began to serve him” (Matthew 8:14–15).
13. It is used in several places to refer to “Lazarus, whom he had raised [egeir] from the dead” (John 12:1, see vv. 9, 17, etc.).
14. Egeir is used in Matthew’s other two predictions of the passion and resurrection in 17:23 and 20:19, and in Luke’s version in Luke 9:22.
EPILOGUE
I began the introduction to this book by observing, “One of the most basic of all human traits is the desire to make sense of things. We all want to know that our life has a meaning, that it has a plot.” Writing this book has given me some new insights into my own story.
As I read through the nearly finished manuscript, I began to see each individual meditation in the light of all the others that came before and after it, and to discover patterns and connections that I had never noticed
before. One good example is that in rereading the four reflections on the closing of Saint Benedict’s Prep, I was struck by how well each meditation seemed to apply also to our monastery’s current challenge of diminishing numbers. What began as a collection of twenty-four separate meditations became a single coherent story in which I can now see some more of the plot of my life. This was both a surprise and a welcome gift.
Further, writing about painful events in my life in terms of the paschal mystery has deepened my awareness and appreciation of the countless graces that the Lord has been constantly, quietly pouring out on me throughout my life.
I hope that as you have walked with me through some of the dark valleys of my life, you may have found an occasional useful insight or some little encouragement to help you deal more peacefully or fruitfully with your own troubled times. Or perhaps you may have learned from one of my helpful “friends” from the Greek New Testament some new perspective on the mysterious ways the Lord is at work in your life.
May God grant both of us the wisdom to keep discovering the mysterious divine love that surrounds us and helps us on our journey—a journey the leads up onto mountaintops and down into dark valleys— until we arrive together in the Kingdom where we will live and reign with the risen and victorious Lord for ever and ever. Amen.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
We are blessed in our day with dozens of helpful works that can deepen our insight into the language of the New Testament. Below are just three well-known and easily available works designed to be used by the layperson with no background in Biblical Greek. Fairly inexpensive editions of each can be found in major bookstores and online.
W.E. Vine. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996.
An extremely useful study aid with all sorts of indexes of biblical themes and key words in English. Individual Greek and Hebrew words are transliterated into English and followed by the spelling in the original language; newer editions also give the reference number from Strong’s (see next entry) for each word, a great time saver, especially for the beginner. This work can be consulted online free of charge by typing in “Vine’s online” in a search engine.