We are Easter People

The Church has always decried gloomy Christians. The great doctor St Teresa of Ávila once prayed, “From sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us!” It would seem that there is nothing more incongruent with Christianity than sadness of spirit. Pope Francis, in his Catechesis on Vices and Virtues, used the words, “a rather ugly vice, sadness, understood as a despondency of the soul, a constant affliction that prevents people from feeling joy at their own existence.” Our Lord himself gives us a list of Beatitudes (Mt 5:3-12) which are, in a way, characteristics of a saint (we read the Gospel excerpt on All Saints Day). Each beatitude begins with “Blessed …”. The Greek word for Blessed used here (makarios), can also be translated as Happy.

But how, we could ask, are we expected to be happy and joyful in a world so full of the darkness of sin, of war, of hatred, selfishness, foolishness, pain and loss? How indeed can we rejoice when our own sins and weaknesses weigh us down?

The thing is, we are not people of the world (Jn 17:16) so as to be drowned in its gloominess. St John Paul II put it this way, “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song” (Angelus, Sunday, 30 November 1986)! We are people of the Resurrection, of the rising of Christ from the dead.

This of course means that we are, in the first place, also Good Friday People; people of the suffering of the Lord. In this Sunday’s Gospel, we meet the disciples of Jesus who had shut themselves up “for fear of the Jews” (Jn 20:19). For years they had walked with the Lord and had seen his power, and they had even hoped that he was the one who would deliver their nation from the rule of the Romans (Lk 24:21), but all that hope had been drowned by the horrific events prior to Easter Sunday. Many of them had run away, Peter had denied him, they had seen him tortured and murdered like a common criminal. They had seen his body disappear in the darkness as they rolled the stone that covered the tomb.

But, as we heard it on Easter Sunday, Jesus did not remain in that tomb (Mt 28:6)! An Angel came on Sunday morning and rolled the heavy stone away (Mt 28:2) and Jesus overcame death (see 1 Cor 15:55-56). On the Cross, all the dysfunction in the world was thrust upon him (see 1 Pt 2:24). He bore it (see Mt 8:17) and overcame it. Christianity does “not pretend that life is all beauty” (St John Paul II). It sees the darkness, but it also has a vision that stretches way beyond and over the gloom, to that eternal brilliant light of Christ that dawned on Easter morning.

Jesus breaks into the closed room of our troubled world, like he did with the disciples, and gives us a peace that is not of this world (Jn 14:27). Indeed, he appears with wounds (Jn 20:27) that tell a story of his suffering and death, but they also remind us that we have been saved and given hope of eternal life (1 Pt 1:3-5). So even if for a little while we must endure various trials (1 Pt 1:6), our joy does not die because it is born of hope in something concrete: that though there are various battles we must fight (and we might lose some of them), the war has been won for us by Jesus.

Even our own sin does not scare us. It is true that sometimes the evil happening around us does not cripple us as much as our own sin, our addictions and weaknesses, but the Gospel gives us St Thomas who was curiously absent from the group on Easter Sunday evening. Even when the others tell him of the Good News of the Resurrection, he refuses to believe (Jn 20:24-25). Does Jesus abandon him in the sadness of his doubt? No! Our Lord does not give up on us. His entire earthly sojourn was a rescue mission to save us from our own mess. He comes the next Sunday and takes Thomas’ doubt away, so that his joy may be complete (see Jn 15:11).

Likewise, when we fall into sin through distrust, doubt, pride, weakness, whatever it may be, Jesus reaches out to bring us back into his joy. We hear in this Sunday’s Gospel reading how he established the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation when he said to the Apostles, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven” (Jn 20:23). The Apostles passed on this authority to their successors (the bishops) and their collaborators (the priests) down to this day, so that this channel of God’s mercy will always be open to us (see CCC no. 1461 and no. 986). It is no wonder this Sunday is also called Divine Mercy Sunday.

St Paul commands the Christians at Philippi, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Phil 4:4). Christian joy is not some sort of naïve giddiness that is unaware, or worse, contemptuous of the suffering in the world, and of the brokenness that is the lot of all humans. It is, instead, a fruit of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (see Gal 5:22) that Christ gave us when he rose from the dead (Jn 20:22). This same Holy Spirit encourages and strengthens us through our life’s hurdles, trials and sorrows, and gives the Church the means to extend the divine mercy of God to us through Confession when we fail through sin. We simply find ourselves with many reasons not to sulk and be forlorn, because in the end nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, not even death (Rom 8:35-39).

This Divine Mercy Sunday is a good day to offer our gratitude to God; to sing our Alleluias; to remember that Jesus is risen as he said (Mt 28:6), which means he is with us at all times to the very end (Mt 28:20), walking with us even if we do not see him with our human eyes, ready to give us “an indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Pt 1:8) if we believe and say with St Faustina, “Jesus, I trust in You!”

This reflection was originally posted on the Catholic-Link website.

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