In my garden stands a particularly fine cherry tree. Until moving there, I hadn’t realised how tall cherry trees can be. It is almost the tallest tree in the garden, only surpassed by a blousy sycamore. And as a good cherry tree, it “does” blossom – on condition that gales and rain don’t come at the wrong time. This year, all is well. The blossom is magnificent. It recalls that exquisite poem of Housman:
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride,
All dressed in white for Eastertide.”
God does speak to us through nature. How can this tree not be announcing the Resurrection, an angel in its white beauty saying “Do not fear. He is risen”?
And this brings me to our glorious group of baptizandae, recipiendae and confirmandi. The tree’s blossom is special this year and some of those involved in helping prepare our candidates for the Sacraments have said there’s something special about this year’s group. For myself I can’t say how much I’ve been touched, Sunday after Sunday (and on other occasions too) by our “frontbenchers” – so steady, so focussed, giving so much encouragement. I have to say this to all of you coming forward, to different drums, to this Easter. You are doing something so personal, thoughtful, original, something asking so much commitment – having perhaps to navigate perplexed family and friends, making sacrifices perhaps that have a touch of Abraham’s about them, having perhaps to stand up to colleagues at work or conversely, surprised by encouragement from unexpected quarters. And so trusting of your teachers and sponsors. All honour to you, really! You are few, but you are not alone. The Lord is journeying with you; it is his journey you are sharing. Surely crowds of angels are with you on the way, and throughout the world thousands of people are on the same path tonight (10,304 adult catechumens and 7,400 teenagers in France alone).
How many journeys come together tonight! The cherry is blossoming!
Forgive me, but poetry suggests one more: Dante’s. Trees and woods are not always lovely; we can get lost among them; they can hide horrors. As his long Divine Comedy opens, Dante finds himself, halfway through life, in a dark wood, with the right way blotted out. The experience is so terrifying he shudders to recall it. Somehow he emerges, and thanks first to Virgil, then to Beatrice and finally to St Bernard he makes his epic journey from hell through purgatory to heaven. Drawn up and on by the good, he arrives in the end at the vision of the Love that moves the sun and other stars, the Primal love that makes all lovely things.
How many journeys! The journey of creation from nothing to being, from chaos to order, variety and life the first reading spoke of, its goal the creation of humans in the image and likeness of God. The three-day journey of Abraham, the man of faith, with his beloved son, Isaac, a journey of unspeakable anguish, which ends in unexpected, global blessing. The journey of the Israelites out of slavery, pursued by an Egyptian army, faced by a sea which opens before them, lets them through and closes over their enemies, a passage opened by a strong east wind, surely the Holy Spirit. And in the prophecies of Isaiah, Baruch and Ezekiel, the journey of return from exile, from sin’s sad aftermath, back to God’s land, “Turn, O Jacob, and take her” – the wisdom of God’s will; “walk towards the shining of her light.” And in all these stories and prophecies, it is the Lord himself who is journeying with, coming every closer, drawing us to himself.
How many journeys! In the Epistle, St Paul evokes the journey our baptizandae will be making shortly, down under the water, down into the death and burial of Christ and up again to walk the new life of his resurrection. And then, St Luke, incomparable Evangelist, recounts how the women go to the tomb “on the first day of the week at early dawn”. They are the first to find the empty tomb and relay the news of Resurrection. And how careful he is to name them: Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James! And how Peter rises and runs and, peering in, begins to wonder.
How many journeys! Wayfaring, soul-faring, God-faring – it is the human thing. Do we think when we’re walking the streets on our own errands that every homeless person sitting there, every face we pass by are persons on a journey? And what of those journeying through mental illness or into the dark of dementia? Or those spiralling downwards however? We’re never still. Or the children discovering the world? The young finding love? The looking for work? The old finally coming to peace? The Lord never absent, journeying with us.
Here’s the thing. Here’s our faith. What this blessed night proclaims is that before all, over all, under all, after all human journeys, with the power to right every one, there is another: the story of stories, the saga of sagas, epic of epics, trek of treks, migration of migrations, exodus of exoduses, Passover of Passovers – the Pasch of the Paschal Lamb. This is the night of watching for the Lord, who though he was in the form of God did not think equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and was humbler yet, even to death, death on a cross and, beyond even that, to the realm of the dead. Down, one poet imagines, seven steps of the underworld, down all the way, back to the wellsprings of humanity, down to “the tall primal dust”, Adam himself, who at the voice of Christ “turns with a cry from digging and delving.” Thanks to the becoming human of God’s Son, thanks to his Passion, death and descent into hell, there is no dark wood, no mental horror, no brokenness of spirit, no sin, no exile from the good, no grief, no lost opportunity, he who was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father cannot unlock from within and raise us from. No life of ours he cannot share and lift up into his own.
Tomorrow the Son of Man will walk in a garden
Through drifts of apple-blossom.
Dear baptizandae, recipiendae, confirmandi and confirmandae, there’s a love that has drawn you here tonight and a voice that has called you. And you have responded. You have followed. And from tonight your journey – however it goes humanly – will be grafted into his, shared with his, be turned again and again into a pilgrimage of hope. And after baptism and confirmation comes the Eucharist. You receive the Risen One himself. Thank you for the several testimonies to this you’ve given. They were extraordinary. And tonight he is yours, the blossoming Tree!
