Happy Easter! Felices Pascuas! Joyeuses Paques! Buona Pasqua!
We have so much to be grateful for, especially the gift of faith that enables us to relate to Jesus as our way, our truth and our life. Today is a day to be joyful, happy and enthusiastic about life. But, a few of us may say, life gives us so many lemons.
You may have heard about parents who had twins, one an optimist, the other a pessimist. The parents asked a psychologist how to better understand these two. The psychologist recommended this for their birthdays: buy a nice bicycle for the pessimist; and for the optimist, go to a horse stable and gather into a gift box the “stuff” from the stable floor. When the twins opened their gifts, the pessimist whined about the color of the bicycle and the lack of gadgets. Meanwhile, the optimist looked inside his box and then giggled, “There’s gotta be a pony here somewhere!” The moral of the story is obvious: be an optimist; and hang around optimist people.
Easter symbolizes new life. Because Jesus Christ is gloriously alive! Easter is about daybreak, starting over. Jesus’s resurrection is a new day. Each morning, we awaken with a chance to start over. Perhaps the night before, we carried burdens: things undone, bad things said, good things unsaid. But with the dawn comes opportunity.
We begin again TODAY. Who wants to be more loving, more generous, more caring, more thoughtful, more helpful? Who doesn’t know a heart to heal, a relationship to mend, a lost soul to find? This Easter, God wakes us up again, to rediscover His extraordinary grace transforming our ordinary lives.
In the Gospel, we hear about the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb only to find it empty. She summons Peter and John. Jesus is not among the dead. He is risen. He is alive. He has passed through this earthly life--through the mystery of death--and entered into a new, transfigured reality. This heavenly reality can be ours as well. That is the Easter message!
Some of you may have seen monuments to those lost in wars or tragedies. The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC displays the names of 58,000 plus men and women killed or missing in that war. When I visited that memorial, I’ve often thought, How many hopes lie buried here. These people were full of life, and suddenly they were dead.
The disciples could have uttered the same words: how many hopes lie buried here. Yet soon after, Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, then to the disciples in the upper room, and to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The resurrected Jesus was not a spirit or ghost; nor was he simply resuscitated, or they would have recognized him immediately. The earthly and crucified Jesus was the same person as the resurrected Jesus. But God transformed him into a new, heavenly reality. And because he lives, we live forever.
How is that? We are born in the flesh, then reborn in the Spirit. Water is poured upon us in the rite of baptism, and in these waters the Spirit of God is poured out to us. The triune God lives within us, and we live within the triune God. As we are confirmed in our faith, the bishop again anoints our forehead in the sign of the cross with the oil of chrism--and God pours out more fully the gifts of the Spirit so that we might practice more faithfully love, generosity, patience. And at this mass, the living Christ sacramentally presences himself in the signs of bread and wine. He mystically reenacts his salvific activity and becomes one with us in Communion.
We are a pilgrim people; and our purpose is to live with God forever. Through the sacraments especially, we experience the living Christ so that we can go forth to love and serve. In the exchange of wedding promises, God strengthens the love that binds a couple together. In anointing the sick, God heals our wounds. If we stumble, the rite of penance celebrates God’s mercy. All the sacraments are signs of God’s unconditional love for us.
Eternal life in relationship with God and one another—that is our ultimate purpose. In the mystery of our own dying, we believe we will make an evolutionary leap into a new reality, as Jesus already has.
Easter is about getting our priorities straight, about asking, “How can we become more god-like, more loving, more generous, more helpful?” Easter is about finding a heart to heal, a relationship to mend, a lost soul to refresh.
Easter is indeed a fresh start. Jesus Christ lives. And because He lives, we live. That is the message of Easter. Amen.
