Jesus said to them, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so also, I am sending you.’ He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.’ (John 20: 21-23)
Easter Sunday is the longest day of all. Since it once happened in time it has become every day.
It wells up from the atavistic depths of creation where the love of Jesus penetrates as he ‘harrows hell’. It breaks the surface of the visible world and continues to expand backwards and forwards in time. The word ‘harrow’ is an Old English term that translates as pillaging or plundering. It is what victors often do in violent and vengeful ways.
But this harrowing is a cosmic work of universal liberation, a total reconciliation releasing all creatures from their bondage to decay and death. Entropy has met its match in the unbounded creative energy of the Word of God that brought all things into existence. Karma has met a higher law – not just suffering the consequences of actions and thoughts but embraced by the all-transcending law of love. Forgiveness rules, not competition for power. We are exposed to the fact that we have the greatest power: to forgive.
The Resurrection began on Good Friday when Jesus breathed his last and surrendered himself irrevocably to the Father, his Father and our Father as he reminds us. The sequence of events which we are obliged to imagine in explaining this single all-inclusive gaze of divine compassion should not entrap us into thinking that anything happening ‘in eternity’ has a beginning or an end. Easter exists in the original Creation.
We breathe in Easter today with the peace Jesus breathes into us as even we huddle behind locked doors of fear and shame. It is the ever-present now of God made present in the entire time-space dimension of human reality. Everything has been harrowed, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
The tragedy of the Cross which shames humanity is harrowed. The sad, empty, waiting wasteland of Holy Saturday is touched by the same redeeming of time. The enlightenment of the Resurrection is not like a short-lived flash of lightening. It is the process and goal of all consciousness beginning with our first breath and at the right moment leading us into eternity. It is the light in us. We have only to awaken and trust it.
Thank you for following the long trek of Lent with us. Today we can all see better what it all means. And like Mary Magdalene, who first recognises the risen Jesus because he recognised her, may we experience and enjoy the mutual recognition of love. It is a love so comprehending that we no longer need to cling to it or indeed to anything. We have been harrowed and freed. Let us run and serve the fulfilment of the new creation that has begun.
