The science fiction novel, and then film, “Journey to the centre of the earth”, is about the bid by science to understand our planet’s formation. That bid also seeks to source the immense renewable energy between the earth’s surface and its centre, which is nearly four thousand miles below. The depths of the earth are known to be as hot as the surface of the sun, so it’s considered impossible to reach the centre because of the heat (six thousand degrees centigrade!) and the pressure (three million times our atmosphere!).

So, we can’t get to the centre of our earthly space. But can we get to the centre of our earthly time, of our human history? If we measure the centre in terms of arithmetic, no we can’t, because time is still progressing. But if we measure it in terms of what era or event was most important for human history, then we can. It is the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. Why? Because these events, which, taken as one, we call the Paschal Mystery, bring together and resolve once and for all the many and serious dilemmas which afflict every single human person in this world. And what are they? They are death and life, sin and mercy, hatred and love, suffering and healing, truth and falsehood, the divine and the human, justice and retribution, separation and reconciliation, the profane and the holy, the body and the soul, time and eternity.

What Christ did for us, in obedience to the Father, was to let himself be crushed by the totality of human sin, a pressure far surpassing that of the centre of the earth, and to be inflamed by a love far surpassing the six thousand degrees centigrade of the centre of the earth. Although the author of life, He accepted death for us and swallowed it up in the Resurrection.

While without sin, he took on all our sin and “became sin” for us so that we might receive mercy. He endured the madness of hatred, overcoming it for our sake with unspeakable love. Being the healing of the nations, yet for us He endured excruciating sufferings of body and soul. While Himself being the Truth in person, He was betrayed, denied and accused of the worst lie possible, blasphemy, so that we might be set free. Although divine, for us he became human in every way that we are except sin. While he was the Just One, He took on Himself the retribution of God for all our sin. Though One with the Father, He endured being forsaken by Him so that we could be reconciled by His death. Being the Holy One, for our sake He endured the profanation of His humanity by being crucified outside Jerusalem, like the scapegoat who carried the sins of Israel into the desert on Yom Kippur. He endured the separation of His sinless body from His sinless soul, reconciling and reuniting them definitively for our sake by His resurrection. And by that resurrection He transformed time into eternity so that, for those who live and believe in Him, every moment of life is now immerse in His eternal life.

So, in His Paschal Mystery, Jesus grappled with the core cluster of issues which we must all face in life and in death, and He gave them a new and eternal meaning. In His Paschal Mystery, Jesus does not just do something heroic for Himself alone. He did it so that whoever believed in Him would have access to His resolution of the most important dilemmas any human being must face. That means that His marvellous deeds of salvation are not just the centre and fullness of time, of history: they are the centre and fullness of the life of each one of us. We are not our own measure, as original sin was to claim; no, we are measured by our relationship to Jesus in His passion, death and resurrection. Our daily calling is constantly to refer, and keep referring, the meaning of our lives back to Jesus who died and rose from death: to allow the power of His Paschal Mystery to form, reform, conform and transform our lives ever more fully to Him.

The grace of Baptism is the way in which Jesus inserts our whole being into His death and resurrection, like branches in the vine. We draw life from Him. Confirmation in the Spirit strengthens that life that we may grow in it and bring it to others. But it is in the celebration of the Mass and, where possible, by participation in the Eucharist, that the events of His death and resurrection are most fully brought to life for us. In the Last Supper, Jesus showed and anticipated the meaning and power bothof what He was to suffer on the Friday and of the resurrection He was to experience on the Sunday. The Mass is the Last Supper.

So, at Mass the very power of Christ’s death and resurrection is made present, just as it was at the Last Supper, in view of their historical reality on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Through the rites and words of the Mass, we participate in these events every bit as much as did those who were there. The centre of time, of history, is here, is now, in this very act of worship. We are one with all who believe and share in it, no matter what century they lived in, no matter whether they are alive or dead. Our time here today is caught up into the fullness of Christ’s time, which is eternity. Every Mass “brings alive” the centre and fullness of history. It therefore calls us to bring to it, and to offer to God through it, all of the struggles and dilemmas of our lives mentioned earlier, and to embed and root them in the Paschal Mystery of Christ.

The Mass has become the centre of the earth, our space, and of history, our time. Without the Mass, we cannot fully live or truly know how to live. Christ knew this and that is why He has given it to us, to be the centre of our time, our lives, our loves, our prayers, our sufferings, our hopes, our happiness, our holiness and our death. What a gift the Mass is, especially on a Sunday! What a challenge to us to take our lives in hand and actively consign them to Christ during Mass! What a Redeemer is ours! We hold Him in our hands so that our lives, our deaths and our resurrection can be held in His!