Lenten Post 8 – My Night in the Holy Sepulchre Part 2

Part I

Let me return to telling the wonderous experience I had in the Church of the  Holy Sepulchre. After the midnight Office I went to pray inside the Holy Sepulchre.  I was so overcome by the realisation that I was praying in the very place from which Jesus had risen from the dead, that I began to wish I could spend the rest of my life in that friary. This would enable me to return again and again, night after night, to what must be the holiest place on earth.

Then suddenly, in a matter of moments, I had a spiritual experience that changed everything. In one sense it was nothing spectacular, but in another sense, it irrevocably changed my whole attitude to the Resurrection that I had believed in since I was a child, but which had never really touched me in the way it touched me that night. I do not claim that the words came directly from God; they most certainly came from my subconscious, but I’m sure God gave them a bit of a push. The words were these:

You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was cru­cified. See, here is the place where they laid him. He is risen now. He is not here. He has gone before you into Galilee.

I changed instantly. I no longer wanted to live in that friary for the rest of my life. The empty tomb suddenly lost its importance, but not its significance. The meaning of the Resurrection struck me as never before. It was as if some­one had said ephphatha, and my eyes were opened to a truth that I knew with my head, but which had never fully pen­etrated my heart. Although my spiritual understanding had not substantially changed, it was totally transformed in a way that I find difficult to put into words. It was as if I had spent years looking at the Resurrection from the outside, as framed in a stained-glass window, then suddenly seen it again, this time from the inside with the sun shining through it.

He Makes His Home in Us

The Resurrection meant that Jesus had been swept up out of the world of space and time in which he had lived before, not to leave us alone, but to be closer to us than ever before, and, as he prom­ised, “even to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20). Before the Resurrection Jesus was limited by the physical body into which he had freely chosen to enter. His choice meant that he could only be in one place at a time, so meeting him would have been as difficult as meeting any major celebrity in our time. But that has all changed now because the same other-worldly love that raised him out of this world on the first Easter day enabled him to re-enter it on every day. So now he can enter into us as he promised, so that he can make his home in us and we can make our home in him, as he promised at the Last Supper. All this could be possible, not in some distant pipe dream, but here and now.

No Longer Limited by Space and Time

The outpouring of God’s love through Jesus did not just happen in the past, two thousand years ago, it is happening continually, but we can only receive and experience it here and now in the present moment. What happened at his Resurrection, was that the Jesus who was once limited by the space and time world in which he chose to enter, was limited no more. Now his glorified human being continually radiates like the sun that the early Christians used to symbolise his ever-loving presence. He radiates, not so much with light as with love, but unlike the sun that only shines in the day, his love radiates both day and night, for there is no time when his love cannot be received by those who believe in him.

Walking up a Downward Escalator

Although it is true that this present moment, and every present moment, is the only time and place when we can open ourselves to receive the outpouring of the love that Jesus continues to send, love, most particularly God’s love, is not magic. Not even God can force his love on us. Forced love is simply impossible as we should know from our own experience. We cannot force our love on anyone else, nor can anyone force their love on us. Forced love is simply impossible. So, if we do not take the practical steps to turn and open ourselves to receive the divine love that is endlessly being poured out to transform and transfigure us then we will remain the same. The spiritual life is rather like walking up a downward escalator; the moment you stand still is the moment when you start to go backwards. In other words, the moment you stop trying to open yourself to the only love that can change you, then you begin to go backwards.

These were the thoughts that were occupying my mind when, at six o’clock, the small Franciscan community came into the empty tomb where I was praying to do what Christians had been doing since Jesus rose from the dead. It was the most moving Mass in which I had ever taken part. When at the end of the great Eucharistic prayer the celebrant said, “Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, forever and ever,” the ‘Amen’ resounded with such power that you could almost feel our offerings mingling with Christ’s and rising to God the Father. At that moment I understood as never before how our offering becomes like a spiritual passageway that not only enables our love to rise through Christ to the Father but enables the Father’s love to descend into us through Christ. The profound mystical at-one-ment that then takes place is consummated in Holy Communion when we receive Christ and tangibly experience him entering into us

Although I was born a Catholic I had never seen so clearly before the meaning of the faith into which I was baptised as a child. Nor had I seen so clearly the absolute importance of the personal daily prayer to which I now committed myself. It was here that I would try daily to open myself to receive the help and strength from God that I needed to love him in all I said and did each day, as Jesus himself did before me. Without doing this I would have nothing to offer when next I went to Mass, nor would I receive what I needed to make my whole life into the Mass.

I stayed on in prayer after that Mass in the Holy Sepulchre, reflecting on the truths that I have just shared with you. I had just had the most important experience of my life an experience that has, in many ways shaped the rest of my life.

Please continue to follow my free course on Prayer in preparation for Easter at essentialistpress.com