If you’ve ever gazed into the crown of a century-old live oak and noticed delicate green fronds curling around the branches, you’ve glimpsed a resurrection fern. The fern lives off the ground, spreading with slender, inquisitive rhizomes. In dry weather, the fern’s fronds curl up, turn brown, and seem to die, but when it rains they turn green and spring back to life. These ferns are all over the South, and I have this idea that in certain areas of Georgia or Alabama you can look down at the beach and see shells, which are symbols of resurrection, and then turn around and look up into a forest bordering the beach and see the ferns. Signs of resurrection are everywhere. It is the principle by which all life stretches out to meet its purpose.
The resurrected Lord is invisible. We only see him by his effects, maybe through a miracle. We also see him by faith, which is a sort of sightless vision attuned to that which is unseen. Because of this, humanity, you and I, are prone to forget all about the resurrection. We say we believe in it but live as though it never happened. Other events seem more real and grab our attention.
The question of what is real is the question of what is transcendent, what creates meaning, what’s ultimately important. It’s not the question of what we mistakenly consider meaningful and thereby consider actually has meaning, but rather, of the actual, real source of meaning all on its own, dependent only on itself for that meaning. It’s real whether we see it or not, whether we appreciate it or not. By definition, this rules out education, wealth, or reputation as sources of ultimate meaning. Neither is reality the negative thoughts we have about ourselves, our embarrassments, failures, and defeats. It isn’t comfort, what we contribute to charity, or what we accomplish on a daily basis. All these things are limited to this world. Reality is more, it must be a supernatural virtue. It must be eternal, escaping the basic confines of the material. At the same time, that which creates meaning must also include the physical. It must encompass and elevate it. Reality is the human soul shaped into a body. Ultimately, the source is the Creator God from whose hand all of these gifts are bestowed.
Knowing this, knowing that the ensouled body is fundamentally real, it only stands to reason that the resurrection is vital, because it is the resurrection by which God divinizes personhood and promises to bring us, body and soul, into eternity. Without the resurrection, nothing is real. Including you and me.
It isn’t blind faith to say this. The resurrection lingers with us yet, and lingers with great power, in the Eucharist which is a miraculous sign. This is a sacrament that works of its own accord, a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. It links the individual to the universal, time to timelessness, body and soul.
Everything else we know and experience is a ripple, a reflection of the Eucharist. We don’t make the sacrament. It makes us. This is the heart of creativity and meaning. The context of the Eucharist is the Mass. Without the Mass, there is no Eucharist, but the heart of the Mass, indeed the heart of life, is the Eucharist, which means that the Mass doesn’t gain its meaning from us or any of our activity. It also means our lives don’t gain meaning from what we do. The Mass has meaning because it is a gift of God. Our lives have meaning because our existence is a gift of God. You are valued and loved not for what you do but for who you are. You are sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father, full of resurrection life.
I want to illustrate my point by examining the definition of the word “Liturgy.” This word is sometimes mistranslated to mean, “the work of the people.” This definition (with no further qualifications) can imply that we’re able to create an offering to God of something that God doesn’t already have. This, friends, is impossible. The liturgy is the sacrificial prayer of the Son to the Father, a divine conversation. We are drawn into that transcendent relationship as we mingle our sacrifices with the work of the Cross.
The liturgy is the manifestation of Our Lord’s divinity, the explosion of divine power into our world, an outpouring of grace. If we were to define the word liturgy, we might do so as, “the work of the One for the sake of the Many.” Christ himself is this work.
St. Paul, for instance, speaks this way when he says that, as a priest functioning as an icon of Christ, he is a libation poured out for the people. His sufferings are the sufferings of Christ, borne in his body, for the sake of the Church. It is the Cross that makes suffering meaningful and the resurrection that reveals its purpose.
I know from my own life that we often fail to really see and celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as something that happened and still happens in us. We live as if he never came. We treat other matters as more important. We fail to value how radically different the Mass is, that if we don’t get divine liturgy right, we won’t ever truly begin to live. We’ll miss God’s gift entirely.
This is why it’s so important to curate our liturgical worship as reverent and Christ-focused. The Eucharist is like the sun. Its rays penetrate everywhere. Get this right and the whole of our spiritual life lights up.
When it comes to your faith, keep the main thing the main thing. It isn’t about labels, or politics, or man-made tradition, it’s about spending an hour at the foot of the Cross where the love of Christ radiates and the glow of the resurrection shines on us. The Eucharist is a great gift, to watch and wait with Jesus for an hour expecting nothing more than to be in his presence. That’s enough. It’s all we need. That’s life.
The crucified and resurrected Christ in the Eucharist is realer than real. [As Marc Barnes wonders], “What if our myths, our superheroes, our accomplishments, our relationships with our fathers, our mothers and our siblings, our romances, our art, our building and tearing down, our suffering…what if all this was the reflection, the metaphor? What if all these realities simply pointed to The Reality? And is that not what it means, to live for Christ? To realize that there can be no pride when all things are but mirrors to His light?”
The Resurrection is so real that even plants in the branches of trees imitate it, and ammonites spin out shells in infinite golden ratios, and every morning the sun rises yet again, and children get born, and saints are made, and death cannot and will not have the last word because reality is Life. Reality is the Eucharist. Reality is Christ and his love and you, his precious creation, gathered into eternity.
Pondus Meum Amor Meus 