And When I Awake, Fr. Cyprian Consiglio Easter Homily from New Camaldoli Hermitage

(This homily is reprinted by permission from Fr. Cyprian's "talks, notes, and translations" blogspot. He will be offering talks and musical presentations in May 15 and 16 at Holy Cross, Santa Cruz. More information here: News and Events )

Sunday, April 20, 2025

And when I awake…

(This was my homily for Easter Sunday here at New Camaldoli Hermitage)

I remember exactly when this happened. I was on the train in north India, traveling from Delhi to Haridwar, and I was reading Abhishiktananda’s book Saccidananda. Briefly put for those who are not familiar with him, Abhishiktananda was a French Benedictine monk who spent the second half of his monastic life in India. He was one of three founders of our ashram there and he was deeply engaged in Indian thought and made great efforts to re-articulate Christian thought using the language of India instead of Greek philosophy. And in this particular section of the book he is writing about the experience of what’s called advaita, non-duality. To again put it simply, advaita is described as when the self, our small self, disappears into God, the Great Self, “like a drop dissolves in the ocean,” as the saying goes. Some consider this to be the highest expression of the Indian spiritual experience.

Well, before he was a wandering sadhu in India, Abhishiktananda was just a plain old Benedictine monk and I found out that he was a rather scrupulous liturgist on top of that. And in this book he says that one of the best phrases to describe Jesus’ awakening is the entrance antiphon for Mass on Easter Sunday morning, which he quotes in Latin, from Psalm 139:18: Resurrèxi, et ad hoc tecum sum––“I have arisen, I am still with you.” And he says something that is rather controversial in the intellectual circles I run in, though it may not be so for you: he seems to suggest that there is something beyond the experience of advaita, non-duality, something beyond the experience of the self disappearing into the Great Self of God. The Good Friday and the death experience was that––the shattering of everything and the equivalent of that experience of non-duality, the total death of self. But when Jesus awoke on Easter Sunday, he was still there, and God was there too. His death, his loss of self had not been annihilation. We have the beautiful simple refrain that Fr. Thomas wrote that we sing for Easter, and it was not ‘til that moment that I understood it: “Awake at last, I am with you still, your right hand holds me fast.” That’s the great surprise, you might say, of the resurrection. (Later I wrote a song and put a whole album of music for Lent and Easter together called “Awake at Last” based on this same image.)

And that moment when I read that on the train rushing toward Haridwar, I had something like a little enlightenment experience, a buzz of the skin of my scalp, tears in my eyes. “And when I awake, I am still with you.” Death is not the end.

Yesterday we celebrated Holy Saturday, traditionally in the Church the day we remember that Jesus descended into hell. We have to remember that hell is not just a place: hell is a state of being, a state of being separated from God. How many times do people say or have I said, “I went through hell”? Do you remember Jesus’ last words on the cross? ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ Jesus went so far into human misery so as to feel what we feel at times––in hell, that is, totally separated from God, as if there were no reason to live, no life, no love, no light. The great theologian Hans Urs van Balthasar thought that because of Jesus’ descent to hell even the netherworlds now belong to Jesus. There is light even in hell, in that place called hell. But more especially and immediately in that state called hell, and in all our little hells, when we feel totally powerless and separated from God.

And when Jesus awoke, he was still there and so was his Father. Death had not been annihilation.

We have to remember this when we go through our personal hells and our own experiences of being emptied, our own kenosis. The dying we have to do is not always the dramatic one nor the final one. What is even more afraid to die than our body is our bloated ego or, as we sometimes call it, or false self, that self that we have constructed for the world, the self that the world has constructed of us, the self of our petty crimes and compulsivities, the self that avoids pain and increases pleasure, the self that puts its-self ahead of others. There’s the death we have to die every time we choose not to act out in anger; every time we choose peace instead of the violence of our petty sense of justice; the death we have to die every time we don’t pick up the phone or send a text and get in touch with that person we think we just can’t live without even though we know the relationship is killing us; the death we have to die in accepting the inevitability of growing older and falling apart gracefully. The death we have to die may mean walking away from the bar, or from our friends who are getting high, or just pushing away from the table from that one more indulgence in a heart-stopping something to eat, or stopping ourselves from doom-scrolling Facebook or TikTok or whatever website holds us captive.

It’s very practical and may not be very dramatic. All the little deaths that prepare us for the total gift of ourselves to God. And we think we are going to die if we have to go without this or that, and we go through hell going through the withdrawal from this relationship or that drug––but we don’t. When we wake, we are still there, and God is there too. God’s right hand has held us fast.

The cave that we have to enter, the tomb that we have to enter, isn’t any other place than the tomb of our own heart. This is where we have to go to die, over and over again. The Good News is that what we will find there is that there is a light behind our deepest darkness, that there is something deeper than our pain. St. Paul says that the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit living in us. That Spirit, that love, is the same Spirit, the same love that raised Jesus from the dead. What we find in that cave of our own heart, after we have died whatever death we have been called to die, is the strength to rise. We find that we are still alive, and God is still there. What we find is that there is light behind our darkness.

What can separate us from the love of God? Paul asks. Nothing! When we wake from out of our darkness, when we have endured our own private hells, we will be happy to find that we are still alive, and God is still with us!

It’s significant for me that when Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead it was Jesus’ voice from outside the grave calling him out and telling them to roll away the stone. But in the case of Jesus resurrection, no one has to roll away the stone, no one has to do anything from the outside. The power was on the inside, the light from inside that cave blasted out of the tomb. And, believe it or not, so with us! Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts, there is a light in the cave of our hearts that can blow the stone away that keeps us closed in our graves. When we go through our hells, we will find out that Jesus has already been there, and he has left something for us––he left the white garment that he was wrapped in. And do you know what that white garment was? That was our Baptismal garment, and when we wrap ourselves in it, we receive the Holy Spirit through our dying with Jesus, and the love of God is poured into our hearts so that, as St. Paul tells us, when we die with the Lord we will live with the Lord, and if we endure with the Lord we will reign with the Lord. And when we wake up from our deaths, we will find that we are still alive, and God is there with us.

What can separate us from the love of God? Nothing. God is behind our darkness; the light is inside of our tombs. Jesus blows the stone away from the entrance from the inside out with the power of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts. If we endure with him, we shall reign; if we die with him, we shall live.

And when we wake, we will find that we are still alive––and God is there too.

Photo: New Camaldoli Hermitage Easter Vigil 4AM