In the darkness of the Church on Holy Saturday night, the new fire of Easter is born. It then blossoms on the paschal candle and all the candles of the congregation are lit from it. The paschal candle will shine in the sanctuary at every Mass throughout the whole season of Easter.
That is not the only time that the paschal candle will be lit. Since Vatican II, the paschal candle is lit again at every funeral as a reminder of our sharing in Christ’s resurrection. Our paschal candle was lit recently during the funeral of our Sr. Mary Magdalen of the Cross. The General Introduction of the Order of Christian Funerals says that “The Mass, the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection, is the principal celebration of the Christian funeral.”[1] Every Mass is a sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection, but the presence of the paschal candle next to the coffin reminds us that resurrection is not just a general reality that will happen to everyone; it is a personal reality that will happen to each of us. The body that is now lying in that coffin is the same body that will be raised up transformed and immortal.
The paschal candle is a reminder of the resurrection, but at Sr. Mary Magdalen’s funeral, Sister herself was also a reminder of the resurrection. I have written elsewhere about how the three vows of religion are signs that we are called to pass from death to life. They are also signs of what we are called to live now in this world as citizens of the kingdom of God. The Collect of the Mass for Religious Vocations asks God “that those you have chosen for this calling may, by their way of life, show to the Church and the world a clear sign of your Kingdom.” Religious men and women witness to the Kingdom of God by the three vows of religion: the vow of obedience calls us to show here and now how God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”[2] Our vow of poverty engages us to empty ourselves as Christ did “that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” with His riches.[3]
Finally, by our vow of chastity, we witness to our trusting belief in the resurrection of the body.[4] With the gnostic tendencies that surface from time to time throughout history and that disdain what is material, the human body is often dismissed as though it were simply a bit of clay that can be molded into any form one chooses. We can do with it what we want. Catholicism sees the human body quite differently. We believe in a God who became human, who took on human nature, and who now and for all eternity is one with a human body. He received that body when He became incarnate in His mother’s womb. That same human body that was formed in Mary’s womb, that lay in the manger, grew to manhood in Nazareth, tramped the roads of Palestine, preached on the Mount, was given to His disciples at the Last Supper, was nailed to the cross and pierced by a lance, and that lay in the tomb, that is the same body that was transformed beyond recognition in the resurrection and raised up to heaven. The proof that it is the same body is given by the wounds of the cross.
He could have taken another body, one that had never had any calluses on his hands from work, had never suffered sore feet from walking, had never received any lacerations from scourging or holes from the nails. He could have given Himself a totally new body, but He didn’t. He raised up the body that was pierced by nails and lance, the same body that He was born with, the body that contains His unique DNA. It is that same body that is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. This understanding of the resurrection is borne out also in the encyclical Munificentissimus Deus establishing the assumption of Mary as a dogma of the Church. Among other saints and theologians, Pius XII quotes St. John Damascene, “It was fitting that she, who had kept her virginity intact in childbirth, should keep her own body free from all corruption even after death. It was fitting that she, who had carried the Creator as a child at her breast, should dwell in the divine tabernacles. It was fitting that the spouse, whom the Father had taken to himself, should live in the divine mansions.”[5] It is “her own body” that is raised up and taken into heaven. It is not a different or a new body but the same body that bore Jesus in her womb and held His dead body in her arms.
Our body is the means by which we can share life with one another: physical life in marriage, spiritual life by our every interaction. By my hands, I type this article, which I hope will enliven the faith of those who read it. It is my body that expresses by my smile my joy in meeting another person, that expresses my love by hugging them in my arms, that seeks to encourage and console them by my words. It is my body that sees others and perceives others, that listens to them and receives their expressions of who they are. All these, and many more, are actions by which I give and receive life and love with other people. In heaven, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage. All communion will be a sharing in the divine life of the Trinity. United in the resurrection to our body, we will express that shared divine love bodily with one another. By our religious vow of chastity, we accept to be witnesses here and now to this spiritual, bodily sharing of life that will be fully possible in the resurrection.
In that vow, we offer to God the body that He gave us by our parents at our conception, with its unique, unalterable DNA, that grew and developed and that walked in through the monastery door. At her solemn profession, each nun lies prostrate on a pall on the floor while the litany of the saints is chanted over her. That is her symbolic death, and when she rises up from the floor to profess her vows, she knows that “those who have a sure hope, guaranteed by the Spirit, that they will rise again lay hold of what lies in the future as though it were already present.”[6] She knows that she is called to live a resurrected life.
Sr. Mary Magdalen gave witness to this belief in the resurrection throughout her religious life and it was clearly evident in the vibrancy of her last days even up to her death. Several of her Sisters from the monastery were with her when she died. The doctors, nurses and technicians who tended her at the hospital were deeply impressed by her. Several of the nurses, who were not Catholics, came to her funeral and they expressed their wonder: “None of us have ever seen a death like that. It was the most beautiful death we have ever experienced.”[7] Sister had lived her religious life in the “sure hope, guaranteed by the Spirit” that she will rise again, and that hope will not disappoint her.[8] The same body that expressed her love and joy while she was with us on this earth, the same body that lay in her coffin next to the paschal candle, will at the resurrection express that love and joy increased and enhanced to an unimaginable degree.
Notes
[1] https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/bereavement-and-funerals
[2] Cf. the Our Father
[3] 2 Cor. 8, 9
[4] Cf. the Creed
[5] https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-xii_apc_19501101_munificentissimus-deus.html , para. 21
[6] St. Cyril of Alexandria, “Commentary on the Second Letter to the Corinthians”, chap. 5,5,
[7] https://catholicspirit.com/news/that-is-what-we-are-here-for-to-walk-through-the-fears-of-death
[8] Cf. Rom. 5, 5
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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