An Ever-Present Victory
I wasn’t born when the Allies won the Victory In Europe, or the Victory Over Japan, but I have known people who were alive then, and people who fought to bring about those great victories. The best I can do is to try to enter into the spirit of the memorials of those victories, which isn’t always easy. It helps to read about the Second World War, and to know what was at stake, and to consider the alternatives that would likely have come to be if those victories had not been won. Then I feel like I have more appreciation for what was done.
I can watch Band of Brothers or Dunkirk and can gain some emotional foothold into what was at stake, but no amount of study or imagination can take me back and make me a participant in that struggle. I am a beneficiary of the victory; I was never in any personal danger from my country’s foes in that war, and in the natural course of things its significance will begin to be crowded out by the immediacy of current events and future fears. This reality is amplified over succeeding generations. We have to work, individually and as a culture, to keep remembrance and significance alive in our consciousness.
This applies to all important moments in the past. “Remember, remember the fifth of November” may live on today primarily because of the traditional verses it introduces; as a cultural observance it is probably more an excuse for autumn bonfires than the touchstone of patriotic fervor, even in the UK. There are so many points in human history at which things could have gone differently that without a lot of conscious effort I can’t really keep in mind the importance of those past events. The past, as they say, is a foreign country.
Bearing all this in mind, it’s easy to see why some people, and even a great many Christians, view the Holy Week we’ve just completed as something of a re-enactment of events from the distant past. Even if we believe that these events are important - even if we believe that they are the most important events in human history - we are apt to see ourselves as beneficiaries in the same way that I think of myself in relation to the Second World War. We were never in danger from the mob in Jerusalem, or from what passed as justice in the provinces of the Roman Empire. We remember, we appreciate; but we didn’t live those things. They’re just matters of personal devotion for us.
But that would be very wrong. The sacramental acts of the Church, as the Body of Christ, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, make present what they represent. In the Eucharist, we are participants in the great drama of Holy Week, as well as beneficiaries. We are lifted up out of time and the eternal Sacrifice of the Son of God unfolds around us. This includes all the events of his earthly ministry, as well as his presentation of his Sacrifice in his risen and glorified body before the Father on our behalf. We are really there. And unlike the person who looks back on the victory of the Second World War but who never participated in it, we are indeed intimately involved in Christ’s victory and in all that is at stake.
Apart from Christ, we are slaves to sin, to death, and to the demonic powers. The drama of our salvation and of our participation in the victory of Easter is that we are free to turn away from participation in that victory and to return to the slavery of darkness. We can switch sides, for even though Christ has won and has defeated the demonic powers, they are still allowed to “prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls” until the final judgment.
Many of us aren’t really tempted to jump ship in a wholesale abandonment of the Faith. The real danger for most of us is the creeping in of worldly assumptions and priorities, and the effects of our own spiritual myopia. We don’t really spend much time on the priorities of Christ and of his Church; we are very easily distracted, and distraction can lead to spiritual ills.
The liturgical and ascetical life of the Church is our best defense against these dangers. We are repeatedly invited to enter in to the reality of Christ’s victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to participate in it in our own lives.
The great victory of Easter is the most important thing in human history, but it’s not something that is only historical: it continues forever, and we are given the immense privilege and opportunity to join in it, to fight the fight on our own small battlefield, and to take part in the great fruits of the victory. Those fruits are not only promised for our future, but are realities into which we can enter now. The greatest is that we are, in Christ, able to become partakers of the divine nature, and to become by grace what Christ is by nature. That is the highest imaginable calling, and we embrace it when we give ourselves over to the life of Christ as he has set it forth in the life of the Church.
This Eastertide, don’t just “come to church:” live the life of the Church every day, and you will fully embrace and enjoy the fruits of the victory that Christ has won for us.
—JB+
