Their eyes were opened

An address on “The Resurrected Christ” given during the Eucharist at a diocesan meeting, as part of a series of addresses on the “faces of Christ”; 27 November 2019

Romans 12:1–8; Luke 24:13–35; order here

“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”

How do we open eyes?

Eight days ago, at this hour, I and fourteen other pilgrims from the diocese were queuing to enter St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican — that wide Bernini colonnade where the crowds gather to hear the announcement of a new pope leading into the vast, marble and gilded church. Inside, I noticed one of our pilgrims take a moment aside, and join the short queue of pilgrims from around the world waiting in front of the small, ancient bronze statue of St Peter half way down the nave — its foot smooth from the touch of a million hands. Our pilgrim made his way forward, placed his hand on Peter’s foot, almost as though he was placing his whole weight on him, closed his eyes, and said a prayer. And for that moment, it was as though the whole of the basilica, the whole of Rome, the whole of Christendom, the whole of the world, was rotating around him — that he was the central point of everything.

How do we open eyes?

It was the feast of Christ the King on Sunday. With the Feast of the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, Christ the King is one of only two major feasts to celebrate a doctrine as opposed to an event or a life from salvation’s history. Christmas Day, Easter Day, Ascension Day, the Day of Pentecost, the Annunciation, all celebrate a happening, a story. Christ the King celebrates a dogma, a concept, an idea about God.

(As an aside, I don’t find it a particularly helpful idea. It’s a feast born from the particular Roman Catholic political situation of the 1920s, as the papacy was struggling with the rise of nationalism and the secular nation state, and emphasised therefore an understanding of Christ the King of the Universe. I also wonder whether we’re reflective enough in our use of the ideas of kingship and even kingdom as ways of talking about God. They ideas rooted in human history applied to the godhead; they’re not ideas we’d normally use any more as ideals for the structuring of human society, but our use of them to talk about God and God’s society can seem a bit stuck in yesterday’s metaphors.)

But, anyway, until Pope Francis listens to me and changes things, it was Christ the King on Sunday, and it made me think of Pius XI’s justification for not just proclaiming the dogma, the idea of Christ the King, but of making it an annual celebration. This is what he said:

People are instructed in the truths of the faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectively by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by the official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements speak but once; feasts speak every year — in fact forever. The Church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; the Church’s feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect on the whole of our nature. We are composed of body and soul, and we need these external festivities so that the sacred rites, in all their beauty and variety, may stimulate us to drink more deeply of the fountain of God’s teaching.

We emphasise the importance of worshipping God, we go on pilgrimage, we place our hand on the foot of Peter because we are composed of body and soul, and eyes are opened by doing.

How am I eyes opened?

Exactly a week ago, we were on our way to visit the Catacombs of Domitilla, south of the centre of Rome. The catacombs, of which there are hundreds in Rome, are underground passages, kilometres long, with niches carved into the walls, in which the early Christians buried their dead. Many of the niches are the size of a small child, a testament to the high rate of infant mortality. Even the adult niches are quite small, as folk were apparently 30–40cm shorter than we are today back then. In second century Rome, even the archdeacons of the Diocese of Bangor would have been giants.

Whereas most Romans of their time would have been cremated, these early Christians buried their dead because they would need their bodies for the general resurrection. For St Paul had taught them that “as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

The catacombs are built on the outskirts of the city, in part because of ancient prohibitions on burials inside the city walls, in part because of the Christians wanting to keep out of the way of those who would persecute and pillage, and in part because the porous, volcanic rock that surrounds the hills of central Rome made it relatively easy to dig. The porous rock also made the niches leak. No wonder Paul had to write “as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.” But I still found myself wondering what those early Christians, visiting their family graves in those dark, stinking catacombs, thought the resurrection of the body would mean for them and their loved ones.

I’m assuming that when I die, I’ll be cremated, and that, for whatever resurrection that awaits me, I won’t need these bones preserved anywhere. And I guess that makes me realize that I’m not exactly sure what that means that I believe about physical continuity and resurrection. And, reading Paul backwards, if that applies to my resurrection, the second fruits, what does it mean for Christ the first fruits?

How am I eyes opened?

Luckily, the Church has always essentially taught that the Body of Christ means three things. Christ’s human body, now resurrected and exalted; the Body of Christ we receive at the Eucharist; and the Church, the people of God gathered, praying, believing, acting.

Says John Robinson of that latter Body:

wherever the Christ is shown forth and recognised in [transformed] living-in-relationship… there, in however ‘secular’ a form, is the atonement and the resurrection.

And as much as I am terrified by what it means to believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, I am more terrified by the thought, the realization, the knowledge, that I, that you, that we are the Risen Body of Christ now — that when we look up having made our Communion in the moment, and see one another, we see the Risen Body of Christ in its fullness, in its weakness, in its normalness, in its extraordinariness. We see almost nothing, and we see everything that is.

“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”