Unless a Grain of Wheat…

This past March and April, our IHM Congregation gathered for our Chapter that takes place every four years. Chapters set the tone and offer a direction for future conversations and decisions. Our new direction statement calls us to commit ourselves to various actions, one of which is “embracing courageously the Paschal Mystery.” 

The term Mysterium Pascale was first used by Christians in the late second century to describe the events of Jesus’ passion, death, resurrection, and glorification. Belief in this mystery informs the heart of Christianity and is a key teaching of Catholicism. It is simultaneously a challenge to our faith, and an incredible gift to those of us who acknowledge its truth and who long to live its message. It builds upon God’s gracious act of creation and God’s self-expression in the incarnation. 

All of life contains the rhythm of dying and rising: the experience of the Paschal Mystery.

It is obvious in nature when summer yields itself to autumn in the Northeast. We live this experience when we let go of youth and adjust to the needs of an older body. Ideas that once worked seamlessly need to be readjusted to keep up with the times and each week new technology calls us to let go of that which no longer works. The hardest letting go is death. It is here that the life of Jesus of Nazareth has much to teach us. 

Every choice Jesus made in his thirty some years of life moved him to Jerusalem the week before his final Passover meal. We see in the Gethsemane passages of scripture a man who is free, who sees everything clearly, and makes the choice to move into that of which human beings are most afraid: death. Did he know and believe that resurrection would take place after his passion and bodily death? We do not know that answer. However, if we view Jesus’ passion and death from the perspective of resurrection, we affirm that God was with Jesus through it all. Elizabeth A. Johnson beautifully sums up the message of the paschal mystery in these words from her book, Creation, and the Cross: “Jesus died not into nothingness, but into the arms of his loving God, the Redeemer of Israel, his Abba. Death did not have the last word.” 

We IHMs are well aware that we will have significant challenges to face as we live into our evolving future. Communal discernment will be needed as we make prayerful choices about issues such as sponsorship, care for the earth, interculturality, and collaborative governance. New questions will be asked, and the future may look hazy or confusing. It is then that we must let the Paschal Mystery be our guide. In the words of Ronald Rolheiser, “The Paschal Mystery is the mystery of how we, after undergoing some kind of death, receive new life and a new spirit.” Easter teaches us that we can move through suffering, pain, and loss to find a new way of living, one we never imagined. 

To whom can we look to give us the courage to not only live the Paschal Mystery, but to embrace it? I suggest the women who walked with Jesus as he carried his cross and stayed by him through his passion and death. They accompanied Jesus’ body to the tomb and brought oil to anoint his body the next day. They did not run from the pain they saw. One of them, Mary of Magdala ventured to the tomb expecting to find a body. We hear her struggle with the present moment as she weeps for the one she loved. She believes that all is lost. We, too, may weep when confused and lost, but if we listen carefully, like Mary, we will hear our name. And then we will hear the call to be disciple and announce to our wounded and divided world that resurrection is real and hope lives on. Mary did not know what would transpire at the tomb. What is required of her is the ability to say “Yes” to a future she does not know. It is the presence of Jesus that makes her yes possible. It is the presence of Jesus’ spirit who will guide us. We need not be afraid. 

The truth of the Paschal Mystery turns our world upside down, like the tables Jesus overturned in the Temple. Pain, loss, and suffering need not have the final word. The sower in the field understands how the Paschal Mystery works. She pushes the grain of wheat deep into the darkened soil. She is patient and knows how to wait. Then one evening, a stalk of wheat emerges from the dark to shine in the light of day. 

Resources 

• Creation and the Cross: The Mercy of God for a Planet in Peril by Elizabeth A. Johnson. Orbis Books, 2018. 
• The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rohleiser. Image Books, 1999.