Easter Reflections

From Holy Thursday through Easter Vigil, Prof. Dr. Father Michael Plattig, O.Carm., celebrated the Holy Eucharist at the Motherhouse Church of the of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis, and has summarized for us some reflections from his homilies.

“This year, on October 4, we celebrate the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis. I would therefore like to draw on various texts from the saint’s Testament or the Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano during the services of Holy Week.

In Chapter 163 of the Life of St. Francis, Thomas of Celano writes regarding the saint’s death: “When the brothers wept bitterly and lamented inconsolably, the holy father had bread brought to him. He blessed it, broke it, and gave each one a small piece to eat. He also had the Gospel book brought and asked that the Gospel according to John be read to him from the passage where it says: ‘Before the Passover, etc.’ He recalled that most holy Last Supper which the Lord celebrated with his disciples for the last time. For in honor of that memory and as a sign of the deep love he had for his brothers, he did all this.”

As a comfort to his brothers, Francis celebrates a symbolic Last Supper, in which he breaks the bread and has the Gospel of Holy Thursday read, which we have just heard. In doing so, he enters into the Passion of Christ, which begins with the Last Supper. According to Celano, there were two reasons for this: the reverent remembrance of Christ’s Last Supper and the testimony of the love Francis had for his brothers.”

Thomas of Celano makes it clear that Francis understood the Eucharist as a meal from which a mission arises, namely to carry on the love revealed in it and to act according to Christ’s example.

In the Testament of St. Francis there is a prayer that became a daily prayer in the Franciscan tradition: “We adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, – even in all your churches throughout the world, – and we praise you, because through your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Compassion for the Crucified One and for the suffering becomes a central theme of his life, until he ultimately becomes the first to bear the stigmata of Christ on his own body.

The message of the Cross is not an easy one, but it is necessary, especially in our time, so that the suffering are not put off, the victims are not forgotten, and our world does not lose all humanity.

As in the Canticle of the Sun, Francis welcomes death—which is terrible and hated by all—as his Sorrella Morte, Sister Death. He sees it as part of creation and at the same time as his companion into the new reality of the new heaven and the new earth, into God’s perfected creation, through death and the Resurrection.

The Easter Vigil liturgy, too, links creation with the message of the Resurrection.

God’s creation, for all that is praiseworthy and wonderful about it, is not the final reality.

Especially in light of the current state of the world, I find this to be a comforting message. This reality, marked by the selfish lust for power of some nations and their leaders, and therefore entangled in war and suffering, is not the final word; humanity does not have the final word; we have heard it: GOD created heaven and earth, and GOD reserves the final redemption of creation for Himself.

Through Christ’s Resurrection, into which we have been incorporated through Baptism, we have a head start on creation. When it rises from sin and death, we who have risen will glorify God with it.

The death of St. Francis points to this connection, which refers to the cosmic significance of the Resurrection, encompassing all of creation. The praise of the Creator in the Canticle of the Sun culminates, in the saint’s death, in the praise of the Risen One, in the praise of the eternal God, to whom creation will follow.”