Easter is power for the present

“We hope in the world to come.”  

Thus we have been taught to pray, and our prayer is true, for we all must die.  But the feast of Easter which we recently celebrated, the most important feast of our Catholic Church year, is more than a hope for the next life.  It is also a new source of life for the present.  

It is dangerous for celibate priests to comment on the difference between the sexes, having never lived with a wife.  However, a writer I once read and whose name I can’t remember,  observed that women seem more firmly rooted in life than men.  Men dream big.  They plan always for the future, argue about their place in the great scheme of things and set their hopes on the projects they create. (Business Report would seem to report more and more women now creating business projects.) However, if I remember correctly the writer wrote a contrasting description of women, it would seem true to me. Women, he said, give themselves to people, hope in persons and desire to be present to loved ones. Certainly, some grandmothers I know have convinced their husbands to move across the country to be close to their children and, especially, grandchildren.

All this philosophizing was to make the point that at the foot of the cross stood a group of women who had followed Jesus to Jerusalem.  They alone, with the exception of St. John, witnessed Jesus’ suffering and death.  These women had embraced more than his teaching, more than his power with the crowds, more than his miracles.  They had given their hearts to him and had to be with him to the end. Thus, they were witnesses to his death.

It was fitting, but also important, these same women would witness his Resurrection.  They came to take care of his broken body at the crack of dawn, the earliest that Jewish observance would allow them after the Sabbath.  Mary Magdalene looked for the dead and found the living.  Her impulse was to grab hold of Jesus, to rejoice at his life. There was no doubt for her, no wondering at the meaning of this, just the overwhelming need to tell everyone that Jesus was alive.  Life was to be celebrated and shared.

St. Peter found the empty tomb and wondered what it all meant.  His younger companion, probably St. John the Apostle, seemed to understand better.  St. Thomas doubted, while the apostles locked themselves in the upper room, fearfully pondering what they should do now.  They suspected that God was at work but it took several appearances of Jesus to convince them.  

In many ways, we Christians, even after 2,000 years, still repeat the behavior of the apostles.  Easter is a mystery for the future, not a Jesus to grab hold of now.  The resurrection of Jesus is a comfort for us when our loved ones die.  In some spiritual state in heaven or purgatory, they are saved and redeemed, waiting for us to join them and eventually witness the final coming of Jesus and the bodily resurrection of us all in a new heaven and a new earth.  Jesus’ resurrection is certainly a hope for us as we contemplate our own mortality.  As he promised his apostles, “Where I am, you also will be.”  

And St. John adds that we do not here know what we will be like, but we will be like the risen Christ (1 John 3:2).

Yet, now Jesus remains in heaven and we on earth.  Our lives are not changed much.  We do not now, as St. Paul says, “feel the power of his resurrection” (Phil 3:10).  The testimony of the first Christians was so powerful because a newness of life was visible in them. St. Paul was describing what he saw when he said that the person in whom Christ lived was a new being.  Depressed and discouraged, fearful and timid, they were raised to new hope and courage, to confidence that, no matter what happened, God would always be with them.  Men and women stained by sin, cowed by conditions, crushed by evil circumstances, had their lives transformed and became witnesses to the power of Jesus within them.  Many early Christians gave their lives for their faith. (But then, we wonder today what gives the Ukrainians their faith and courage!)

St.  Peter is the model of Easter transformation.  Before his Easter experience, he was a braggart and a coward.  After, he was a leader and a rock of strength.  St. Peter, weak as he was, had placed all his hope in Jesus.  The Resurrection vindicated that hope.  We, too, live by hope.  It is the oxygen of our souls.  Easters tell us that, no matter our hardships, our hope is never in vain.  Our world and our personal lives are in the hands of a good God whose will for us is wholly benevolent.  

Easter means that there is a power of love and right and truth that is at work among us.  It broke into the world in the person and ministry of Jesus.  Because he lives, that power of love, right and truth will continue to transform our world and keep it going.

  Strengthened by the message of Easter, we play our part in this transformation of the world as followers of Jesus.  One day, we will enjoy the resurrection with him.

Come, Lord Jesus! 

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at johnny [email protected].