The irrepressible resurrection

Catholic New Times, April 20, 2003 by David Nazar

It was the first Friday of the month at the height of Lent and being without ministry, I went to one of the nearby churches for 7:30 a.m. Eucharist. Like most churches, it is under lit and there is no heating-well, there is no money. The church itself is about 200 years old and, having been returned to the Ukrainian Catholic Church several years ago, is like most churches under renovation. A dense web of ascending wooden scaffolding stands amid the faithful in the typically pewless church.

Some 150 people attended the liturgy while another 100 stood in line for the confessions that would begin only after Mass was done. Almost half of the collected faithful was under thirty years of age, though there were no children. This was a work day, a school day. It seems it was a faith day.

The thought rolled around my head as to why there were so many young people at the Eucharist and in line for confession. Understandably, the enthusiastic declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991 spawned an energetic rush to churches, a practice once forbidden, but something long ago an essential expression of the culture. The early rush had about it the thirst for something new.

However, the first fervour is long since past. Independence of itself did not live up to expectations. The country suffers again and struggles to maintain an almost numbing hope that its people will one day be ruled by the principles of justice which the government is accustomed to promising, that there will be material improvement in a land rich with natural resources, that there will be a distribution of wealth in a world of dark powers and criminal principalities. These youth do not have a long tradition of going to church and praying together. Yet faithfully they come in number by the morning's early light, obviously dressed for work and for school. What do they seek?

The lenten Gospels of the Byzantine Rite numerously repeat the crucifixion accounts, interspersed with stories of Jesus healing the sick and liberating those bound by demons. The healings and miracles of Mark's Gospel which we have been reading have about them have the following pattern. A person is sick, possessed by a demon, deaf and mute or otherwise handicapped to the point of being unable to speak a personal hope or desire.

The crowd brings me imprisoned soul to Jesus and in that person's name begs for a cure.

On occasion, Jesus enters even uninvited into the world of the afflicted one. In every case he dispels the demonic power and sets free the soul held captive. With confident abandon he enters into their imprisonment, into their hell.

It is an interesting pattern: the captives are brought to Jesus by those who are free. Their action, their prayer places the startling teed before the one who can save. Jesus without pause or reserve enters heir hell and breaks the chains that bind.

The sub-text throughout Mark's Gospel is that each of these wonders is an instruction for the believing yet unbelieving disciples. Jesus variously instructs and chastises them until they can both see and receive the mission that is his very own. For there comes the day when Jesus asks that they not only bring to him all those in the possessive fetters of blindness and confusion, as the devoted servants who do their master's bidding, but that they should do this work themselves, as collaborating partners. For Jesus gives not only instruction, but his power and the promise of his presence for every need that cries for his help.

Most everyone attending the liturgy receives communion. The post-communion chants begin and the elderly women struggle to their feet from knees used to the aged stone floor. They will be back tomorrow. The confession queue will begin moving soon when Mass is done. In the silent transfer of a mystical power that released a nation from an indescribable bondage not so long ago, a new generation of disciples takes up common cause with the one who can save, the one who breaks the fetters and sets the captives free.

David Nazar SJ is the superior of the Jesuits in the Ukraine. He teaches theology at the Catholic University in Lviv.