Easter Day 2024

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Col. iii. 2)

Our journey through the Lenten Season to Good Friday will have been of no use if it has not been characterized by affection. Set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth, proclaims St. Paul this morning, and not on things of the earth. (idem) Affection is an appetite that draws us, attracts us, and captures our attention. Throughout the Holy Season of Lent, we have prayed that the Holy Spirit might purify the thoughts of our hearts so that we can follow Jesus up to the Jerusalem of His Cross and beyond. Our affections have been set…on the things above [and] not things of the earth, things that have come down to us in the passionate heart of Jesus Christ to lift us up higher. Out of the unquenchable love of His heart, Christ desired that our affections should rise up to embrace Him in the Death He died for you and me on Good Friday. From there to here, on this Easter Morn, Christ now longs that our affections might rise higher still into His Resurrection Love.  

But setting [our] affections on things that are above and not on the things of the earth is no easy business. And it is not that affection is evil. God made it for a reason. But affection is fickle, unreliable, and uncertain. Affection, like all good things, must be tried and tested, lest it meander into the realm of evil. God’s affection and desire for us is pure and perfect. From the Divine Depths, articulated and expressed in the incessant, loving Passion of Jesus on the Cross, the uninterrupted longing of God for our salvation has persisted. The Word has gone out. God’s desire and affection have never swerved from His Great Unseen Eternal Design. The Word of God came down from heaven to live in man’s heart. His Good Friday is but one moment in the unfolding drama of our Redemption and Salvation.

Our affection, as a response to Jesus Christ, was tried and tested on Good Friday. The mighty engine of Caesar’s Rome tried to capture our attention and affection with an offer of expeditious peace, the Pax Romana, a peace that would conveniently rid us of Jesus Christ’s messy and menacing death. Even God’s chosen people, the Jews, tried to claim our affection with a tradition that offered cheap Grace and inexpensive discipleship. The fear and even cowardice of Jesus’ Apostles then lured us into a broken and killed affection that we, surely, would somehow get over. Human affection carries with it a kind-of loss of self-composure and meekness. Solomon, in Proverbs, tells us A fool giveth full vent to his affection, but the wise man quietly holdeth it back. (Prov. Xxix. 11) Affection threatens us with losing something or all of ourselves in order to know the good and love it with our whole heart.

And yet, God’s affection for all men persisted on Good Friday with a Passion that longs always to call forth and redeem the affection of men in all ages. The affection of God for us in Jesus Christ said to us from His Cross, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. (St. Luke xxiii. 34) From the Cross, Christ’s affection reached the Good Thief. Come follow me. Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. (St. Luke xxiii. 43) From His Cross His affection reached out to His Mother and the blessed disciple. Come follow me. Women, behold thy son…son, behold thy mother. (St. John xix. 26, 27) From His Cross, His affection began to move us all out of fear and despair into new life. His affection even took on our desperation and dereliction. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me. (St. Matthew xxvii. 46) With ongoing affection He mustered up enough desire for our salvation to cry, I thirst. (St. John xix. 28) From the Cross, He concluded, with unbounded affection, It is finished. (St. John xix. 30) Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit. (St. Luke xxviii. 46) Come follow me even into my death, as my death that shall become yours also. On Good Friday, God’s uninterrupted affection for us men took suffering and death up into the abyss of Holy Saturday.

And through it all, our affection was, no doubt, hesitant and halting. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Genesis i. 2) Sin and death seemed to have swallowed up our affection for the life, light, and love of God in Jesus Christ. As in Adam all die (1 Cor. xv. 22) seemed to have consumed our life, light, and love.

As we move from Good Friday to this Easter Sunday, to this first day of the week, something strange begins to happen. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. (Genesis i. 3,4) In the beginning, God affectionately made the Light to inform, define, and enliven all of creation. In the same Light now, incandescent beams of Divine Affection will open the eyes of believers’ hearts to a new creation being illuminated by that true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into world. (St. John i. 9) Darkness begins to flee, sin begins to be felt as dead, death begins to be conquered, and ignorance yields to Wisdom, as the Divine Affection jumps up from Death in the heart of Jesus. The pure Affection and eternal desire of the Father of lights have transformed the Son as flesh from Death into New Life. The old Man is Dead, and the new Man has come to life with glory.

At first, only angels and nature sensed the strangeness of this Light. The elements stirred, the air was parted, the fire blazed, and the earth shook and fell before the rising Light that follows the passion and affection of its Mover and Maker. The Father’s immortal, immutable, and immovable course of affection for man’s redemption is on course and thus is still at work in the heart of Jesus. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans vi. 9, 10) The words spoken to Isaiah the prophet are remembered

But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
and he that formed thee, O Israel,
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
(Isaiah xliii. 1)

Christ is the fulfillment of the Father’s unceasing affection for us. And yet, in this morning’s Gospel, we learn that man’s affection for God in Jesus Christ, now risen from the dead, will take time to perfect. Christ’s death seemed like an end. We read that The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. (St. John, xx 1,2)

Jesus had said, And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. (St. John xii. 32) At first, the affection of both the Apostles and the women for who Christ is and what He can do, was confused, uncertain, and halting. Mary Magdalene was moved still by her affection and love for Jesus, to anoint his dead body. She finds the stone rolled away. Her affection for the Light is not yet redeemed. She ran to Saints Peter and John and exclaimed, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him. (St. John xx. 2) Her affection remains in darkness, believing that Christ’s enemies have stolen the body. But she remembers the words of the prophet: And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have…brought you up out of your graves, And I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live. (Ezekiel. xxxvii. 12-14) Her stirring affection for things above begins to run to find John and Peter. Their affection and love run to the empty tomb. As Eriugena says, John outruns Peter because contemplation completely cleansed penetrates the inner secrets of the divine workings more rapidly than action still to be purified. John’s affection already begins to rest in contemplation and hope. Peter’s affection outruns it with action and faith. The affection of Peter must enter the tomb of darkness first to then understand with John’s affection. (Hom. Gospel of St. John, 283, 285)         

God’s uninterrupted affection and desire for all men’s salvation is still at work in Jesus Christ. Stirring within the hearts of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John are the affection for, faith and understanding in the Light that said, I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. (St. John xiv. 18, 19) Soon the Apostles will see God’s unfading Light in Christ, begin to receive His Life in Him, and return His Love through Him. Christ is risen from the dead. The Son of God made flesh, made man is Risen from the dead. In the Resurrected Light that shines through the transfigured flesh of His new life, we must remember that we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians iii. 2,3) In the Resurrected Light, let us reckon [ourselves] to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans vi. 11) In the Resurrected Life, Light, and Love – let us embrace unabated affection of Jesus Christ with our own affection –that affection and desire for becoming very members incorporate in His Risen spiritual and mystical Body, transparent, obedient to His Holy Spirit…apt and natural instruments of His will and way, (The Meaning of Man, Mouroux, p.89) reflecting His Life, Light, and Love into the hearts of all others. And with the poet let us so begin to set the whole of our affection, the thoughts of our hearts, on Christ, who has redeemed and restored our human nature for greater things than these, rising up even to things above, not things of the earth. (idem)

Then shalt thou feele thy spirit so possest,
And ravisht with devouring great desire
Of his dear selfe, that shall thy feeble brest
Inflame with love, and set thee all on fire
With burning zeale, through every part entire,
That in no earthly thing thou shalt delight,
But in his sweet and amiable sight.
(E. Spenser: Hymn to Heavenly Love)

Amen.
©wjsmartin