LENT v
The
body we receive in this sacrament is a body that died, and having died was
buried. The body was done to death and laid in a tomb, to wait for a divine
miracle. Christ lies in his sepulchre the image of Christian hope; nothing lies
there but the bare hope of resurrection. Hope stretches between sacrifice and
life renewed. Vision can often see no further than the sacrifice which God’s
commandments impose; it cannot descry the enrichment of life which God’s grace
intends. Hope holds the gap. ‘Must I rule the appetite of sex within the law
of Christ, must I persevere in practices of prayer which are dry and seemingly
infertile? It is death to my spirits. What life will ever come of it for the
Christian people or for me?’ If this is death, I ought to embrace it for
Christ’s sake, and be willing not only to die, but to lie dead in sure and
certain hope. Where the burial of Christ is, there the resurrection of Christ
will be.
