On Good Friday, I told you that there were three key events in the Crucifixion, the praying in the Garden, The death on the Cross, today we will discuss the Curtain being torn in two in light of the Resurrection.
On Easter Sunday, we celebrate that Jesus resurrected from the dead. In doing so, he conquered death and now he is leading us into eternal life. However, we also come to realize, if we read the scriptures carefully and look at the teaching of the Church that something else is going on.
Jesus’ death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection actually changes everything including who we are as human beings. I often tell you to read the prologue of John and the prologue of 1 John and you will see this is celebrated well. Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness he is the one who conquered death and promises us eternal life.
However, those words are meaningless to us if we do not know what they mean. One key to understanding them is that the curtain is torn in two.
What does this mean?
If we go back to the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, we learn that Moses becomes an intermediary with God. He alone speaks to God and every time he does the glory of the Lord is so strong that he must wear a veil to protect others.
This is further recognized that in the Sanctuary of the Temple, there is a curtain that separates the Holy of the Holies which is the presence of God through the Law and the people of God in the liturgy. We see Zechariah finds himself in the presence of Gabriel when he is beginning to offer sacrifice to God in the Holy of the Holies.
When Jesus dies on the Cross the Curtain separates meaning we no longer need this distance between God and his people. Now we can have direct contact in prayer ourselves. Understand what this means.
You and I are now able to have direct contact with God in our prayer for ourselves and others. We pray to the Father through Jesus. We as Catholics pray to saints not as required intercessors but as fellow children of God who have successfully entered the Church Triumphant in Heaven. However, we can still pray to God directly in Jesus Christ.
This changes not only our way of prayer but also our understanding of who we truly are.
You see we are all now priests in the Kingdom of God. I am an ordained priest and you are members of the priesthood of the laity. Through the Eucharist, the Sacraments and our prayer and liturgy you and I are in direct contact with God himself.
This is the fruit of the resurrection.
Notice something powerful, Jesus goes off to pray every morning prior to his Resurrection, no where in the Bible does this indicate Jesus did this after his resurrection? He explains that now he is glorified in his body and his body is glorified. His is now changed but he also changed us. Although we have yet to have a glorified Body we are now able to intercede directly with Jesus for our needs and the needs of others.
This also means that our prayer is essential to who we are.
If you look at the problems in our world and in our country why are they there? It is because we are people of faith but we are not living our faith to the way we should. Each of us through the resurrection of Jesus have received power in the Holy Spirit to be as St. Paul says ambassadors for the Kingdom of God and in doing so we bring our needs to God in prayer ask him to glorify himself and us through his response.
We have the power to live in prayer and to act in prayer in ways that lead us to be a new creation of Christ.
We are not simply to live a moral life but a life rooted in prayer where we ask the Lord to fill us with his grace so that we may serve him and others. This is a completely different understanding of what it means to be Catholic.
I wonder if God is now calling his Church to a deeper understanding of who we are. We are different now because Jesus resurrected from the dead and we have a call to live that difference by allowing that prayer to transform us and those around us.
You and I have a mandate to glorify God who gave us that power through the death and resurrection of his son.
Be people of prayer, act on your status as disciples of the risen Lord and live as ambassadors of Christ. Let your prayer and its direct link to Jesus himself transform you and lead you to live your faith in ways that you never imagined before and to bring you to the edge of service to Christ and neighbor.
Let us build a parish that is so prayer-centered it demonstrates why the resurrection is so important. It is not only what we can do to Heaven but also that we can live as new creations as St. Paul says beyond what we could imagine prior to the resurrection.
Let us live the resurrection in all we do and we succeed in doing that by being people of prayer interceding for ourselves and others and let us ask God to see the power of that prayer.
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