April 19, 2020

We continue to celebrate Easter, albeit in a strange and unexpected way – but I think one of the things this time offers us is a time to step back and reflect on our lives and how we have been living them and ask ourselves if we have been living them in the way we are called to.  Obviously, on Easter, we think a lot about tombs and about people being buried.  But, of course, even when we are still alive, we can find ourselves buried in all sorts of things.   

We can certainly bury ourselves in fear, in anxiety, in frustration, in anger, in selfishness, in work – where these things begin to dominate our lives and  seem to be the be all and end all of our life – everything else gets submitted to them – we live buried in them.  We think about people who bury themselves in things which are very threatening to their spiritual life.  Some people bury themselves in themselves – they think only about themselves and what they want or what they think they need, they start to think the world revolves around them and they see nothing outside of their immediate wants and desires to be satisfied, it’s kind of a narcissistic outlook on life, they bury themselves in themselves and can see nothing beyond themselves.

Then there are others who bury themselves in amusements and entertainment and passing pleasures.  For them life is just a collection of experiences and the pursuit of something new – they give no thought to anything of any significance, no thought to the deeper meaning of life or questions about what lies beyond this life, they go from one thing to another with barely a thought, they have buried themselves in amusements and distractions.

There are also some who bury themselves in sin – in sinful habits or addictions, they have no concern for God or His law nor any sense that there even is a moral law, no, for them there is no sense of self-denial, no sense of curbing appetites, they bury themselves in sin.

And when we bury ourselves in these types of things then we literally our burying ourselves in ground which is not fertile, burying ourselves in cold and dank tombs which the sun can never reach, and they are tombs that hold no promise of any glorious future, they are, simply, tombs – graves of those already half-dead.

But, there is another One we can bury ourselves in – we can bury ourselves in Christ.  To bury ourselves in Christ is to make Him the center of our lives, to seek Him always and everywhere.  To bury ourselves in Christ is to be obedient, even to the point of taking up the Cross.  To be buried in Him is to root ourselves in the graces of the Sacraments and prayer and to allow His life to enter our lives and to join ourselves to Him in a deep and abiding way, to put our lives into His Hands. 

When we bury ourselves in Christ then we are burying ourselves in rich and fertile ground, we enter the tomb – yes – but not a tomb which ends as a tomb, but a tomb, instead, which ends in glory and new life and resurrection. ​