Fr. Alan's homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion - Sunday, April 1st 2007
Just how does redemption work? Exactly how does Jesus life, death and resurrection "save" us? The 19th century protestant hymn "There is a green hill far away" put it like this:
He died that we might be forgiven, He died to make us good, That we might go at last to heaven, Saved by his precious blood.
There was no other good enough To pay the price of sin; He only could unlock the gate Of heaven and let us in.
That is the classical medieval theology of "Atonement" or restoration of peace between God and humankind, ruptured by the Original Sin, the "declaration of independence" of Adam and Eve's disobedience. That same theology is expressed in our Eucharistic Prayer 3 like this:
Look with favour on your Church's offering, and see the Victim by whose sacrifice you have chosen to be at peace with us …
However, early Christian writers had several "theologies" of redemption, just as we today evolve other ways of looking at Jesus Paschal Mystery. I have been talking during Lent about Victimisation, the role of the Victim in acting as a "lightning conductor" for communal anger and instability. I have suggested that this offers a key to understanding the mission of Jesus: the mission of the Innocent One whose death both exposes our guilt and whose return as a living presence forgives it once and for all.
Saint John Chrysostom, (4th century CE) one of the greatest preachers of all time, spoke poetically about redemption. He asked his hearers to reflect on three aspects outlined in the Scriptures: a virgin, a tree, a death. He said this:
The virgin's name was Eve, she knew not a man. The tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The death was Adam's penalty. But now these three symbols of our defeat have become symbols of Christ's victory. In place of Eve there is Mary, in place of the tree of knowledge of good and evil there is the tree of the Cross and in the place of Adam's death there is the death of Christ.
This is a poetic way of looking at the whole "History of Salvation" as we have come to call it in the last hundred years. It is a symmetrical story, for symmetry is pleasing and helps the story to become memorable. It is also asking us to think of God's saving work as a work of art, a thing of beauty, like the many icons and hymns which these words of Saint John Chrysostom have inspired.
The Paschal Mystery of Christ defies words. It is the point at which language cracks and crumbles before the revealed secret of God's plan for humankind. So there will be many ways of understanding and expressing it in words or images.
For us the greatest image, as it were, of redemption is the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass is in all senses a work of art, art both divine and human. What we offer is what Christ offered: himself, his Body and Blood, offered to the Father in obedience and to us in love.
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