When life is hard.

Sunday, May 10th, 2020

One of the hard things about life is just that: life is hard. We walk as if life is playfully simple. Somehow we always expect it. That nothing else will go wrong. That we’re on top of things now, so now its a steady ship. This is not surprising: that is the life we are made for. Eve and Adam walked like that: the green grassy groves, walked gently in the easy warm breeze in full and certain union with their Creator and communion with each other. No misunderstandings. Just peace. Unsurprising we still look for it. Unsurprising we still fall for it: it is our heart’s desire, our yearn for the origin. But it is not so.

And this is the hurt of our lives. Betrayed by our expectations, we walk smoothly on the path into a square block of darkness - a pit. Where the person we loved once was, there sits a blunt gap.  Where our health, our job, our relationship, the oiled systematic ticking over of our social fabric - smack!, there is a wall blocking what we once easily lived, barred for a while, or forever from it. It is gone. And we loved it. And it hurts.

This is reality. This is the sorrow of the fallen cosmos Adam and Eve tragically caused for us - already too late and too far to turn back. It was, I think, hardest for them: what we desire, they actually lived, longly and lovingly. And then the garden was gone, tranquility upended, and they were alone, far from God and close to the bitter, dead earth. This is our world. This is our sorrow.

Which is blown out of our faces by the Risen Christ in his words to us today. “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Do not let your hearts be troubled! How can he possibly allude to anything like that in the trouble I face today? But yet that is already the main news - it is Great News. God is here. He is not far. He speaks to me. He is interested in me. He loves me. For he is here, and he is speaking to me.

And the reasons for joy only blossom:

“Trust in God still, and trust in me.” He wants a relationship with me, and he offers it to me - I need only choose to trust, to give him my life, and I’m his.

“There are many rooms in my Father’s house;”: life with my Creator is not just with him. It is with many - all of us, if we want: we can live together in secure happiness, at the beating heart of being, the heart of the Father.

“I am going now to prepare a place for you,” Christ does not bludge at the Father’s right. He is busy, preparing where we, personally, will be.

“and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too.” Death too, that trickiest dark of horrors - is now the arms of the personal Christ carrying me into Eternal life.

You see why it is so good to be a Christian? My friends: this hospitality that Christ offers us: it is not for later. Otherwise he would say it later. It is for now: so he says it now. What is the answer of your heart? What is the secret beat of its movement? Give yourselves to him, and belong to him, and have your place with him - first of all your time of daily prayer. For that is the first place he prepares for us.

Let us pray:

“Almighty ever-living God,

constantly accomplish the Paschal Mystery within us,

that those you were pleased to make new in Holy Baptism

may, under your protective care, bear much fruit

and come to the joys of life eternal.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.”