He is Risen

The March by Paul-Henri Bourguignon

Just came across this Easter homily from Merton (from where else but Facebook). I love the way Merton steers us away from superstition toward a living reality. This excerpt doesn’t do it justice, you have to read the whole homily.

Homily is HERE

"When the holy women arrived at the tomb, they found the stone was rolled away. But the fact that the stone was rolled away made little difference, since the body of Jesus was not there anyway. The Lord had risen. So too with us. We create obscure religious problems for ourselves, trying desperately to break through to a dead Christ behind a tombstone. Such problems are absurd. Even if we could roll away the stone, we would not find his body because he is not dead. 

"He is not an inert object, not a lifeless thing, not a piece of prop- erty, not a super-religious heirloom: HE IS NOT THERE, HE IS RISEN. 

"The Christian life, Christian worship, Christian community, the Eucharist, all these have been obscured by a limited ritualistic piety that insists on treating the Risen Lord as if he were a dead body, a holy object, not Spirit, and Life, and Son of the Living God. 

"Today let us come with faith to the banquet of the Lamb, the Risen Savior, to the Bread of Life that is not the food of the dead but the true and Risen Body of Christ. He who encounters the Risen Christ in the banquet of his Body and Blood will live forever! 

"Come, People of God, Christ our Passover is sacrificed, and in sharing his banquet we pass with him from death to life! He has risen. 

 "He is going before us into his Kingdom! Alleluia!"