At the pub yesterday after Mass, we talked about caterpillars and butterflies a little. I used to breed them when I was a child, before I became an adult and became prone to spending an entire Sunday in the pub, falling asleep while talking to other parishioners, waking up face down on the table and feeling embarrassed and alone. Fr Ray told us to party yesterday for Ascension. I think I may have taken his words too much to heart.
It struck me in a small moment that Christ is like the Butterfly. For as Man He becomes incarnate in the Virgin's womb, becoming, like the caterpillar egg, God the Son made Man in the Virgin's womb. There He is nourished by the Virgin's Motherly love and care.
He emerges from the Virgin's womb and like the caterpillar, small and defenseless, appears as a normal baby, yet He is God made flesh. As a Child and as a Man he remains totally vulnerable. As a Man, in His Ministry He is meek and unprotected, open and vulnerable to the insults and injuries of sinful mankind as would be the caterpillar from birds who seek to devour it and even becomes for us, 'like a worm' at His crucifixion, for he is no longer considered by onlookers as human.
Then in the Tomb, like a cocoon, His very being is changed. He descends to the place of the Dead and releases the captive souls, that they emerge from the cocoon of the Dead and may fly, like butterflies, into the Eternal City of Heaven.
Then when God the Father raises Him up by the Power of the Holy Spirit, like a butterfly, He bursts forth from the tomb, in Glory, shining in the radiance of God's Beauty, free from the power and sting of death, which no longer has any power over Him. He has been raised by a great Miracle by the Author of Life, His Heavenly Father, with Whom He was with eternally and yes, it was He, Christ, through whom everything was made, yes, Man himself.
Then at His Ascension, He is lifted and goes up, exalted and free like the butterfly, into Heaven, no longer even bound by natural law, for He has entered into a new and glorious state! From there, Christ intercedes for the World and His Church, bestowing His Grace on mankind, for whom He came, died and rose again.
At Pentecost He sends to the Church the Holy Spirit to give the Church the Power to proclaim the Gospel, to baptise, to forgive sins, and to dispense His Blessed Body and His Most Precious Blood, so that man too, may emerge from the cocoon, the tomb, the chrysalis, may die to himself and live for God and become more like Him, in Beauty, in Grace and in Holiness, like Christ, the Butterfly. In Confession we go into the cocoon, and absolved and forgiven, and we walk out in the Beauty of Christ's forgiveness and Grace.
In Purgatory we hope to enter into a chrysalis of suffering and purification, only to emerge one day into the brightness of God's eternal and Heavenly City. The Virgin, by the merits of her Son and by the favour of her identity as Mother of God, is assumed body and soul, into Heavenly Glory and is crowned and adorned with Majesty by her Son.
At the Resurrection at the End of Time, we hope to receive new and glorious bodies, more beautiful, of more splendour than even the the wings of a butterfly, to be adorned and crowned by Christ to dwell with Him, in the company of His Saints forever and ever! Talk about stretching a metaphor of metamorphoses!
'God became Man so that Man might become God' ~ St Athanasius
