Solemnity Of Easter – Our Faith Begins With Easter

(By Fr. Dexter Brereton)

Easter – The Holiest Of All Christian Feasts

Easter is the holiest of Christian feasts. Our faith begins at Easter. Easter marks the most important thing that ever happened to Jesus and this, we call the “paschal mystery.” The word translated as “paschal” in English, comes from a Hebrew word “pesah” which means “Passover.” Easter then is the Passover of Jesus from suffering and death in this world to life with God. It is important to remember however, that in our Catholic understanding the “Paschal Mystery” is not a distant, isolated historical event, but the event that gives shape and meaning to our lives today. The Paschal mystery, is something that we live in the present, in 2016. Every time we go to mass, we recall this paschal mystery in a very powerful way. The mass is what we call a memorial. A memorial is more than the recounting of past events.  A memorial makes past events happen in the present. The sacrifice of Christ becomes present now. It is not a time machine. We do not go back to Calvary 34 AD but Calvary is made present in 2016 AD. Our Calvary or our sacrifice is our very lives – not the prayers we say in church. The words we say at mass over the bread and wine symbolize our own suffering, dying and rising again. This suffering, dying and rising takes place outside of mass, in the world out there. All the good and the not so good events of life are caught up in this sacrifice we place on the altar.

Getting up early to prepare food for the family before we go to work, the long difficult hours spent in traffic or tending a sick child or spouse, the joy we feel when a new child has been born, bearing patiently with each other’s faults, suffering at the hands of a drug addicted member of our family, the anguish at the death of someone we love, the ordinary experiences of life like feeding the dog, baking a cake, washing dishes, the high experiences like watching a good football game or a cricket match, our social activism, our involvement in community groups. The whole of Christian life is thus transformed into an act of worship and we make of our lives a sacrifice, our suffering, dying and rising again. In so doing we intimately join ourselves to God who pours out his love on the world, by ourselves ‘becoming Jesus for others’ and pouring out love in return.

Today, Easter Sunday in Luke’s Gospel we read the words: “They found that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but on entering discovered that the body of the Lord Jesus was not there. ”This is our story, not just Jesus’ story. We too, in various ways have been placed in our own ‘tombs’ in which we had been sealed with a stone: a terrible marriage, poor health, a bad habit, or one which causes us much suffering and discomfort, an unpleasant job. In my own life, the experience of the resurrection when I discover, like the women that, “the stone had been rolled away from (my) tomb” happens in bits and pieces; in partial realizations. I am never freed of my tomb all at once; I have never experienced resurrection in my life as ONE BLINDING FLASH. I can definitely say however, that ‘the stone has been rolled away’ and I am no longer “trapped” in a problem or a situation. Here I also think of the spiritual founder of the Spiritan Fathers to which I belong, Francis Libermann. For many years, Francis was barred from the priesthood due to his grand mal epilepsy, which at that time was an impediment for major orders. At some point in his life, just before turning 40 Francis went on a pilgrimage to Loreto and experienced a cure. What is important about Francis’ cure from epilepsy was that this ‘cure’ did not involve a complete cessation of his symptoms. His attacks did however, greatly diminish so that he could be ordained, but more importantly, he came to experience a degree of psychological freedom from the ravages of his disease. His fear of his illness was as bad, if not worse than the actual disease itself, and what God did was not only to diminish his symptoms, but enable him to carry it well, with a sense of hope. This is an experience of someone whose tomb has been unsealed, where “the stone had been rolled away from the tomb.” This Easter, the word of God invites us all to recognize the various ‘tombs’ in our lives and more importantly, it invites us to see that even in ‘partial’ ways, the stone has been rolled away. Let us then lay claim  to that resurrection, let us lay claim to the miracle of life that God is working in so many little ways as we speak.

Lord, we thank you for all those great and small occasions, when, like the women on the first day of the week, we come to the tombs in our lives and discover that the stone had been rolled away. We thank you God that it is your will to heal us and that we do not always remained trapped in the past, entombed in guilt, entombed in shame, or entombed in anger. We pray you give us the eyes to recognize even the smallest resurrection experiences in our lives. Amen.