What, if not Cosmic Re-Generation?
Since Easter night, I have found myself repeatedly wishing my friends here in Spain: “Happy Easter!”
But I ask myself, are not these words altogether too mundane for the Unutterable Cosmic Enormity betokened by this Feast?
And I who write a weblog critiquing the banalisation of the Catholic Mystery found everywhere in the post-Vatican II Church, I must ask myself also, do I not contribute to this banalisation by such a greeting?
And ask myself whether, perhaps in writing this entry, I can make amends?
For it seems to me that although we recall the rising of Our Lord today, we do not recognise sufficiently the Cosmic Dimension of all that this day recalls.
And of course, how can we ever sufficiently recognise the Cosmic Depths and Vastness of its significance? I do not believe that the greatest saint, even were she or he to spend a lifetime contemplating the significance of This Day of Cosmic Re-Generation could begin to do it justice.
Still, I tend to suspect that although we hail Christ as Risen, we could do more to recall that not only Christ is Risen, but so, so, so, so much more is Risen with Him. Unutterably and eternally changed …
This Easter Sunday, I am not going to try to say much more in my own feeble words, but instead will simply put forward the words of others, which I think worthy of meditation.
And to the concern of some perhaps, what I put forth will be from that very Vatican council, whose consequences did so very much to make banal the Mystery of Christ. And to help us to forget the Cosmic Mystery of this day …
Yes, I am going to quote Gaudium et Spes, a document which even our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, now trying to “save the council”, has critiqued for decades. This is to say: critiqued as Joseph Ratzinger the theologian and Cardinal – critiqued perhaps more than any other document from the Council.
If you are a Catholic traditionalist reader of our site, dear friend, I pray you will not be scandalised. I join with you in grave concerns about so very much that these Vatican II documents gave birth to. Yet there is sometimes great beauty in them too.
And seeing this, and recalling this beauty to mind, may help us all to understand better, those like the Holy Father, who seek to “save the council” …
Thus, I leave you with these words from Gaudium et Spes, concerning Our Lord and all that He brought to completion this day. I am adding some italics and unusual breaks here and there to emphasise some things that strike me as particularly beautiful:
(21) To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled,
(22) by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man.
He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice(23) and loved with a human heart.
Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.
(24) As an innocent lamb He merited for us life by the free shedding of His own blood. In Him God reconciled us (25) to Himself and among ourselves; from bondage to the devil and sin He delivered us, so that each one of us can say with the Apostle:
The Son of God “loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). By suffering for us He not only provided us with an example for our imitation,
(26) He blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning.
The Christian man, conformed to the likeness of that Son Who is the firstborn of many brothers,
(27) received “the first-fruits of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:23) by which he becomes capable of discharging the new law of love.
(28) Through this Spirit, who is “the pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:14), the whole man is renewed from within, even to the achievement of “the redemption of the body” (Rom. 8:23):
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the death dwells in you, then he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also bring to life your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). …
(31) … Christ has risen, destroying death by His death; He has lavished life upon us …
From Amazon USA:
Most of these can be also be found in our Amazon UK store here – (though sadly not the beautiful French film Bernadette which does so much more to evoke the epoch than the Hollywood version).
