We Must Overcome Death by Finding God in it! Blessed Easter Everyone!!!

In his book, "The Divine Milieu" Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “We must overcome death by finding God in it.”  Have you ever had the absolute grace of being close to someone who has learned to do this? Someone who for years has striven, and wrestled and cried out in their search for God amidst their diminishment and pain. It is a terrible and beautiful thing to watch the resolute surrender and offering of someone who refuses to let go of God as everything is stripped away….their health, independence, financial security, loved ones, and finally life itself.  Have you ever had the grace to be invited into the journey of someone walking intentionally toward their suffering and death believing that God was at the very centre of it all?  I have, and it taught me more about what Easter means than any sermon or book ever will!

Teilhard de Chardin when speaking of the transformative Easter Mystery says, “God must in some way or another make room for God's self, hollowing us out and emptying us,  to penetrate into us in order to assimilate us in him…The function of death is to provide the necessary entrance into our inmost selves...and become fullness and unity in God.

My friend, I will call her, M (out of respect for our friendship and her journey) instinctively knew this, although she did not know she knew!  M would say that suffering was her vocation.  Suffering filled her life with meaning and secretly each day it christified her. She could not see this, she had to trust and risk to believe in the power of the Risen Lord burrowed deep within her diminishment. 

Teilhard (and M. in her own way) goes on to say,  “You are the irresistible and vivifying force, O Lord, and because yours is the energy, because of the two of us, you are infinitely the stronger, it is on you that falls the part of consuming me in the union that should weld us together.  It is not that I should die while communicating. Teach me to treat my death as an act of communion.”

At her funeral,  M chose a very long reading from the Gospel of John (19: 17 to Jn: 20:18) It began with the end of the passion narrative, and moved into the resurrection appearance to Mary of Magdela.  I sat there and listened with tears in my eyes thinking..."She got it!  She really understood!"  It is impossible to separate the cross from the Resurrection, Death from Life. The Gospels and M teach me I must live fully into both because they are one great movement!  I think I am going to go for a walk to the cross now...it only seems appropriate!

God of life and death, of day and night, we place ourselves into your holy hands...

Christ has Risen!  He has Risen indeed!!  Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

                                                  Chantelle