Argumentum
de profundis
(Proof from down deep)
Introduction
Tombs
On this fifth Sunday of Lent
we are at the tomb of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, and we are approaching
the Good Friday tomb of Jesus. When Jesus heard that Lazarus had died, he
rushed to
There are many tombs we
build for ourselves along the journey of our lives. There are tombs of
self-pity and jealousy, tombs of fear and fret, tombs of prejudice and hate. There
are our tombs of certainty in which we lock ourselves up together with our way
of seeing and doing things, and lock everything else out--tombs over which hang
our sign “My way or the highway.”
We crawl in and curl up in
these tombs of ours, and there we stay unless the process of maturing and
growing up, assigned to all living things, manages to call us out of their
darkness and stench. On this fifth Sunday of our Lenten repentance, Jesus bends
down and calls into the tombs we build for ourselves saying, “For God’s sake, get
out of there!”
The
tomb that death builds
But the mother of all tombs
is the tomb that death builds
for us. That’s the tomb from which all other tombs get their darkness and
stench. That’s the tomb in which Lazarus lay for four days. That’s the tomb in
which Jesus lay for three days. That’s
the tomb in which you and I and all our loved ones are finally and surely laid
to rest. That’s the tomb of the first reading today: “I will open your graves
and have you rise from them and bring you back to the
No matter how hard we try
to ignore or evade it, the inescapable fact is that we are born to die. We all enter
this world ”with a death sentence already written on
the palm of our hand: cancer will eat away at our flesh, a fanatic with a sword
will cut off our heads, a drunken fool will mow us down with an automobile,”[1]
a sociopath will shoot us dead in a court room. The death sentence might be deferred a bit and
enable us to live to a ripe old age of eighty,
but at the end of the day there is no escaping the tomb that death
builds for us.
Easter is about the tomb
Christmas is all about
life. It takes place at the stable and crib where life is born. Strange to say,
Easter is all about death. It takes place at the tomb of Jesus where death is overcome. Christmas is
indeed joyful, but Easter is somber, for it deals with the death sentence
written on the palm of our hand. I have always marveled at the fact that we
have a hundred joyful songs to sing for Christmas but hardly a handful for
Easter, despite the fact that we always insist that Easter is the mother of all
feasts.
Christmas is indeed joyful,
but Easter is somber. If there is a joy to Easter, it is a somber joy about death
overcome. If you’re young and haven’t as yet had much experience with death and
don’t have the least suspicion that you’re going to die, then Easter, I
suspect, has almost no emotional content. If it has any joy to it at all, it’s
mostly limited to Easter bunnies and bonnets.
But if you’re one of those
1600 families that lost a son or daughter these past two years in Iraq, then
Christmas loses most of its joy for you, and now it’s Easter that’s first in
your book. The hundred joyful carols you used to sing at Christmas are now
muted before the one and only word that’s left you—the Easter word par
excellence: Alleluia. You say it
over and over again because it’s the only word you’ve got. In fact, it isn’t
even a word at all but just a kind of soothing mantra consoling you that somehow and somewhere God has opened the grave of your son killed in
Iraq and has led him to the land of Israel.
The leap of faith
In his eightieth year, Morris
West, a noted novelist, writes in his book A
View from the Ridge that he feels like a climber who, after a long and
arduous ascent, has reached a height and then pauses to catch his breath to screw
up enough courage for the last stage of his journey.
Before me the
land falls steeply into a dark valley, beyond which I see (or I think I see)
the lights of the city which is the goal of my pilgrimage. By any measure of time, I am not far away
from it, but I wonder, as I have often wondered before, whether the city is an
illusion and whether its lights are only jack-o-lanterns. However, I have
always known that one day I would have to go down alone into the dark valley
and make my own discovery of what lies on the other side.
Strange as it may seem, I am not afraid. I have accepted long since the fact that a
confession of faith is a confession of not knowing. I have accepted to trust that the city does exist, that
the lights are real, and that what awaits the pilgrim is a homecoming. Prove it
I cannot, but with trust I accept it.
Faith’s
proofs
That’s
sometimes called “the leap of faith.” But that leap of faith is not some blind
shot in the dark, as the expression sometimes seems to imply. It’s not a matter
of closing your eyes, gritting your teeth and believing with absolutely no
proof at all that the city—the heavenly
Official spring is just around
the corner. Up in
By the beginning of March we’ve
had it and are crying out, “Who shall roll the huge stone
away for us?” Suddenly a solitary silly robin appears and hoists herself against
the rock. We snicker at her because there's one more blizzard waiting in the wings.
But at the end of the day we know the back of winter has been broken and that
from now on it's the snow that's silly. Lingering snowdrifts holding on for
dear life finally succumb to the newborn sun and spring bursts forth in all its
glory.
In northern climes, spring
is revelatory especially for those who don’t wallow on the surface of things
but live down deep. For them spring reveals proof de profundis, proof from the depths within themselves. For the poet Milton spring revealed Intimations
of Immortality--hints and hunches about resurrection to immortal life. For
him spring revealed hints and hunches that God, indeed, will open all our
graves and have us rise from them and bring us to the
A close friend, who was bravely battling ovarian cancer
for two years, would scan the internet for medically scientific cures. These
she would bring to her doctors to help them cure her. They were good doctors who
knew that they didn’t know everything, and they took her seriously. In a card
written at a past Easter she wrote,
I
like spring a lot. It's a time when so many things are giving just the
slightest inkling, the smallest sign, that perhaps things aren't really what
they appear to be--dead. Trees aren't really dead at all. Seeds aren't really
lifeless pebbles. There is a lady cardinal
taking twigs, one at a time, to a secret place in the fir tree. It's the merest
whisper of a promise of things to come.
She was writing about intimations of immortality. She was writing about a proof de profundis—a proof from the depths
within herself—a proof not found in those who live on the surface of things.
Conclusion
Proof de profundis
At Christmas she sent a long canned letter about
family members I barely knew. I rapidly cruised through it and came to her
bottom line. It gave me deep pause.
My
struggle with ovarian cancer continues, and I’ve run out of options in
chemotherapy drugs. My body has become very weak, and I doubt that I would be
able to tolerate any more chemo. Tests
show the cancer continues to grow. We had a gathering of our family, and a
hospice nurse came to speak to us about the program. After the holidays, I plan
to enter a home hospice program.
She entered the program after Christmas and died
shortly after. She didn’t die with a faith that was a sheer shot in the dark.
She didn’t die with her teeth clinched. She died with a smile on her face.
Because she didn’t live on the surface of things, she died with proof de profundis, with proof from the depths
within herself that God would open her grave and call her out and lead her to
the