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PAX

Homily

11 May 2025

3rd Sunday after Easter

The following homily for this week’s Gospel incorporates the reflections of Blessed Cardinal Schuster on the life of Saint Benedict and the Holy Rule.

Mundus gaudebit, vos contristabimini, sed tristitia vestra convertetur in gaudium.

‘The world shall rejoice, and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.’ (John 16:20)

Jubilation and the Cross

Today the world of nature is radiant with the joy of spring, and the church is radiant with the joy of the Resurrection. She jubilates today in the Risen Lord: Jubilate Deo, we sang in the Introit. We will hear in the Offertory: ‘I will sing praises unto my God while I have being.’ But even as the Church is jubilating with Paschal joy, the Lessons present us with a sobering contrast.  Saint Peter tells us that we are strangers and pilgrims, and are to refrain ourselves from carnal desires. He gives us challenging and at the same time very everyday instructions: ‘Be subject to the king, be subject to the governors’, he says in so many words, ‘Obey your masters, not just the good ones, but also those who might be harsh in their treatment of you.’ And so amidst the joy of Easter there is the sobering reality of daily life and the demands of Christian living. And Our Lord proceeds to tell us in the Gospel of the sadness that we will endure during the ‘little while’ when we do not see Him. We are reminded again in today’s Mass that the joy of Paschaltide does not take away the scandal of the Cross. Rather, Paschaltide reveals to us the meaning of the Cross, and thereby allows us to have true joy. And so we are presented in the Gospel with the contrast between the life of the world and the life of grace which is given to us in the Easter sacraments.

Mundum cum flore reliquit

Blessed Ildephonse Schuster comments beautifully on the Gospel of today, and relates it to the life of our Holy Father Benedict.

Today the Holy Gospel (John 16:16-22) traces as it were two opposing sketches: the worldly life and the spiritual life, drawing thence the conclusion that it is better to endure now the sorrows of our Via Crucis, ne cum hoc mundo damnemur. (1 Cor 11:32: ‘So as not to be condemned with the world.’) The grave words are those of Saint Paul.

The Lord describes for us in just one word the worldly life. The world gaudebit [will rejoice]. It amuses itself, even when it already appears with the water up to its neck. Thus the writer Salvian noted that, while already the horde of the barbarians was about to descend into Gaul and Italy, the declining Roman Empire was thinking instead about putting together public amusements and spectacles. Moritur et ridet. Rome is about to die and she laughs!

Saint Benedict, as a student at Rome, himself also was familiar with this worldly life of his companions; but he remained terrified before the vision of the hell over which this flowery precipice hung. Mundum cum flore reliquit. (St Gregory, Dialogues II, at the beginning: ‘He abandoned the world, while it was in flower.’) While for him life was still in flower, and the attraction of staying in the capital of the Empire was, in the words of his contemporary Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe, barely surpassed by the glory of Paradise, Saint Benedict fled away from the banks of that infernal abyss, and sought at Subiaco a refuge of salvation.

Saint Benedict recognised the joys of the world to be what they are: very empty, very deceptive. And so he set off to seek true joy, the joy that comes from following Christ.

The Church, Suffering with Christ

Vos autem contristabimini. Woe if it were not so! It would mean that the Church is no longer the mystical body of Christ, in whom He in some way extends His Incarnation and redeems the world.

Origen observes quite well that the historical life of Christ is a prophetic symbol of that of the Church across the centuries. She too, the Church, is born in squalor, labours, preaches, enlightens the blind, raises the dead, at times is handed over into prison, condemned to the final torture.  In the end, she will rise again with Christ and with Him will sit at the right hand of the Father.

That which is written of the Church is true proportionally of each of her members.

In hoc positi sumus (1 Thess 3:3, ‘Unto this have we been placed’), Saint Paul said joyfully, after having been rescued from a riot of the people which very nearly cost him his life.

Even dwelling in the monastery does not exempt us from the common condition of all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ; hence Saint Benedict writes that a fruit of the monastic life is this: in eius doctrina usque ad mortem in monasterio perseverantes, passionibus Christi per patientiam participemus, ut et regni eius mereamur esse consortes. Amen. (Rule, Prologue: ‘Persevering in His teaching in the monastery until death, by means of patience let us partake in the Passion of Christ, so as to be likewise partakers of His kingdom.’)

For the Glory of Eternal Life

The Apostle says that Christ proposito sibi gaudio, sustinuit Crucem. (Heb 12:2): in view of the great and joyous fruit of the Redemption, He willingly endured the cross. This was the theme of the Angel, when he descended near to Him in the Garden of Olives to comfort Him.

Today the Holy Gospel avails itself of the same theme for us.

Now, says Jesus, you will be oppressed by sadness. But this is a matter of a fleeting nunc [now], which, if it seems long while it is unfolding, once it is passed, will appear very fleeting: Momentaneum et breve tribulationis nostrae (2 Cor 4:17: ‘Our momentary and light tribulation.’)

Once we have traversed this series of nunc, of instants, which we call time, it will be succeeded by the blessed eternity. There, iterum videbo vos…et gaudium vestrum nemo tollet a vobis. (John 16:22, ‘I will see you again, and then no one will be able to deprive you of your joy.’)

The promised beatitude will consist in the clear and perpetual vision of God. Not only will He see us again, but we will see Him: cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. (1 Cor 13:12, ‘I shall know Him as He now knows me.’)

Now, nunc, every consolation, even holy ones, is transitory, but there above it will become eternal. For this reason the Patriarch Benedict writes: Propter gloriam vitae aeternae (Rule, Ch. 5: ‘For the glory of eternal life’). These words would merit to be carved in gold over the doors of all monasteries. Why this Abbey? Why this new kind of life? Propter gloriam vitae aeternae.

The Vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem

This is what the Church wants to leave us with today, and this is why, early in the morning, all throughout the three Nocturns of Matins, we were given Responsory after Responsory presenting us with visions of the heavenly Jerusalem. We heard in the Matins Lessons today from the Apocalypse, and the Responsories allowed us to participate in the praise of the heavenly choirs that are depicted in the Apocalypse before the throne of the Lamb: ‘Worthy art thou, O Lord, to receive the book, to open its seals!’ And then, over and over again, was set before us the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, ‘descending from God, beautiful as a bride adorned for her husband’. ‘Thy streets, O Jerusalem, shall be strewn with gold, and there shall be sung in thee the canticle of joy, alleluia, and through all of thy streets will be said by all: alleluia!’

This is the vision that the Church wants to leave us with today: the heavenly Jerusalem whom we see embodied in the beauty of the Mother of God, her whom we so often invoke in the Collect of her Mass, asking that through her intercession ‘we might be delivered from our present sorrow and be able to enjoy perpetual happiness’. She is the cause of our joy, she who herself shows to us the beauty of the heavenly Jerusalem to which we look forward. And so we ask her today to help us to embrace joyfully the cross of daily life in this world—being subject to every human authority, embracing all of the crosses that are ours here in this modicum, this ‘little while’ here in this valley of tears, confident that after this ‘little while’ she will show unto us the blessed fruit of her womb Jesus, and then our joy no one will take from us.