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Homily Text: Canon Pat Browne at Easter Vigil 2016


Scene from The Room

Scene from The Room

A few weeks ago I went to see the film The Room. It is about a man kidnapping a young woman and keeping her in his garden shed for seven years. He never let her out of there. He visited the shed often with food and the things she needed for day to day living - and then to have his way with her.

After some time she had a baby. She brought the boy up in that shed - they called the shed The ROOM - and she taught him to read and write. She told him about the things that were outside the room but so as not to disturb him she told him they weren't real. They were as things in a fairy story. Every morning when he woke he greeted his reality - what he knew. Good morning table. Good morning chair. Good morning spoon. There were no windows - only a skylight in the roof but all you could see through that was the sky. One day a leaf had fallen on it and he wondered " Where did that come from? Is the leaf real?"

By the age of five she had a bright little boy and now she felt was the time to tell him that outside the room was real and that they must try to escape. He reacted badly to this news. He would not believe her. He was afraid. He wanted to stay here in what was familiar. His mother assured him outside was real and that's where she had been before she came to live in the ROOM. Eventually she persuaded him that they must plan their escape. But the way out would not be easy. She made a plan with him. He was afraid but eventually they did escape. The film is based on a true story.

It is a film that spoke to me deeply about faith and life. We live in this world that we can see. It is our reality. Our room. We make our home in it whatever it's limitations. There is a skylight and the suggestion that there is also a beyond - which we wonder about. But is it real? Or is it just a fantasy? A fairy story?

There is one who has been outside there and he has come among us to tell us about it. Jesus. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father, he tells us in the gospel of John 16:28.


But many of us will not listen. Like the little boy we stick to what we know and refuse to hear talk of any reality other than what we know now - even if that reality has its limitations and drawbacks. Like the extreme secularists in our world today some of us even get angry when people tell us there is a bigger reality beyond this one.

But Jesus is persistent. He has a plan to take us beyond what we know now because to stay here forever would deny us of any human flourishing. Yes our Room is serving us well but like a mother's womb it is only good for us for a time. We must leave it to have fullness of life.

Jesus shows us how to make the transit from this place to the beyond. It won't be easy. It is the way of the Cross and through the door of death. We are afraid. But he will go first; through a death which seems to take him away from us. But he leads through that door to wider open spaces that are as yet unfamiliar to us. It is there with him we will experience resurrection and new life. One life has to end before another can begin.

In the film, after some time the little boy went back to the room where he had been held kidnapped. It looked so small. But he wasn't angry. It had served him well and he goes round the few things that remain in it now and says Goodbye. Goodbye table. Goodbye chair. Goodbye spoon. Goodbye room. Now he is ready to move on.

We will do the same one day. Please God we will be grateful for what this world gave is but we will see clearly then that we had always been destined for that bigger place beyond where Jesus has gone before us. This is the invitation of Easter and the purpose of Jesus's death and resurrection
"I want you to have life and to have it to the full."

That fullness lies beyond what we know now. Do not be afraid.

Canon Pat Browne is Parish Priest at Holy Apostles, Pimlico, central London, and Roman Catholic Duty Priest at the Houses of Parliament.

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