Happy Easter! Felices Pascuas! Joyeuses Paques! Buona Pasqua! Frohe Ostern!
Today is a day to be joyful, happy and enthusiastic about life. We have so much to be grateful for, especially the gift of faith that enables us to relate to Jesus Christ as our way, our truth and our life. Yes, we have every reason to be optimistic about life!
You may have heard the story about parents who had twins, one always an optimist, the other a pessimist. The baffled parents decided to go to a psychologist to better understand these two different personalities. The psychologist recommended this for their birthday: buy the pessimist the best bicycle you can find; and for the optimist, go to the local horse stable and gather into a gift box the “stuff” you find on the stable floor.
When the twins opened their birthday gifts, the pessimist began to whine about the color of the bicycle and the lack of gadgets. Meanwhile, the optimist opened his box, looked inside and giggled. “You can’t fool me. There’s gotta be a pony here somewhere!”
The moral of the story: be an optimist. Look for the good in ourselves, in other people and in every situation in life. That's what Easter is all about.
The word “Easter” comes from the name of an ancient Saxon goddess of the dawn or spring. Easter symbolizes new life. Why? Because Jesus Christ is alive!
The Easter holiday brings back childhood memories, of coloring eggs, or hunting for eggs. The egg can symbolize the struggle of a bird to free itself from its shell so that it can soar into the heavens.
We as disciples of Jesus struggle through a broken world, a world out of sorts, so that we can soar into the fullness of the kingdom of God. More precisely, we believe that in death we will break out of our earthly shell, so to speak, and experience a new transformative, transfigured heavenly life.
Easter is about daybreak, starting over.
Jesus’s resurrection is a new day. Every morning, we wake up with another chance to start over. Perhaps when we went to bed the night before, we carried burdens: things undone or put off, bad things said, good things unsaid. But in the morning all is possibility, opportunity. We begin again TODAY.
Who among us is content with things as they are? Who among us does not want to be more loving, more generous, more caring, more thoughtful, more helpful?
Yes, who among us doesn’t know a heart to heal, a relationship to mend, a lost soul to find?
This Easter, God wakes us up again. It is a new day. Let this be the morning to start again, to rediscover God’s extraordinary grace transforming our ordinary lives.
In the Gospel according to John, we hear the story of the resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and finds it empty; she summons Peter and John. They discover that Jesus is not among the dead.
Jesus is risen. He is alive. He has passed through this earthly life – as we are now--- and then through the mystery of death Jesus entered into a new, transfigured reality.
This heavenly reality is ours as well. That is the Easter message!
Some of you may have seen the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. The polished black granite wall displays the 58,000 plus names of men and women killed or missing in that war. I’ve often thought, How many hopes lie buried here. These soldiers were full of life. And suddenly they were dead.
Then I contemplate Easter. The disciples of Jesus, huddled in Jerusalem, could have uttered those same words: how many hopes lie buried here. The two who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus could have said the same. And yet, forty-some hours later, the risen Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene outside the tomb, to the disciples in the upper room, and on the road to Emmaus. Jesus was not simply a spirit or ghost; nor was he simply resuscitated. Otherwise, they would have recognized him immediately.
Yes, it was a bodily resurrection; the earthly and crucified Jesus was the same person as the resurrected Jesus. But he was transformed into a new reality. Jesus said to the disciples, I live, and because I live, we also live.
How is that? No sooner are we born in the flesh than we are reborn in the Spirit. Water is poured upon us in the rite of baptism, and in these waters the Spirit of God is poured upon us, and a new life is ours. The triune God lives within us, and we live within the triune God.
As we grow into adolescence, the bishop anoints our forehead with oil in the sign of the cross—and in that gesture, God pours out more fully the gifts of the Spirit so that we might practice more faithfully the fruits of the Spirt in our daily lives: love, generosity, patience, and faithfulness .
And at this Eucharist, where the living Christ sacramentally presences himself to us in the signs of bread and wine, where he mystically reenacts his salvific activity and becomes one with us ever so briefly in Communion, the living Christ feeds us with his life so we can continue our journey. Yes, we are a pilgrim people. And if we should stumble on our journey, the living Christ lifts us up in the rite of penance where we celebrate God’s mercy.
Yes, through the sacraments, privileged encounters with God, we experience the living Christ and we go forth to love and serve one another. In the exchange of wedding promises, God strengthens the love between husband and wife. In the anointing of the sick, God heals our sinful wounds. All the sacraments are indeed signs of God’s care for us as we journey to our heavenly dwelling place.
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. Ours is indeed a faith in a new day, a fresh start.
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 about a new day, a fresh start. Why? Because Jesus Christ lives. And because He lives, we live. Amen.
