Easter Sunday April 20, 2014

There's a dramatic disconnect between our Easter celebration and the Easter Gospel. We have the gift of hindsight to know that Jesus rose from the dead. As so we are dressed for a celebration, our music is spectacular, there is festivity in the air and in our environment. But the Easter lilies betray the simplicity of the Gospel. Peter and John and Mary were only just beginning to understand. And, in reality, so are we.

The Easter Gospel is not filled with the pomp and celebration of our Easter liturgy this morning. Listen again: “On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. She ran back to Peter and John and said: They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.”

The first disciples did not exactly experience the Resurrection event with the celebration of Handel’s Alleluia chorus. The first disciples only saw an empty tomb and burial cloths. The crucified Lord was very much on their minds. The first disciples’ Easter faith was a very gradual process. Looking at the empty tomb for Peter and John and Mary, love and death was where their Easter faith began. John is known as the beloved disciple. He has the love and the trust of Jesus. And it was Mary’s love that drives her passionate grief. Before experiencing the joy of the resurrection, the first disciples were much grieving the death of the one they loved.

The same can still happen for us today. A few weeks ago, I was called to visit and pray with and anoint a long time and faith-filled parishioner of St. Joe’s. Standing next to his wife of 58 years and together with their children and grandchildren, we prayed for Don that he would soon share in the fullness of the Risen Life in Christ. As we began the prayer of anointing, he came to consciousness and made the sign of the cross with us. All of us felt the sacredness of Don making the sign of the cross. Now it would be just a couple of hours that he would go home to the Lord. This was one of his last acts of consciousness.

What are the signs among us that we as a faith community are an Easter people? This man’s dying gesture making the sign of the cross expresses his faith that his life in Christ is not ended in death; rather he is about to share in the fullness of the Risen life of Jesus.
There was a profound sadness as one who was deeply loved would no longer be present to us as we have known him. Strange as it may seem, the approaching death of this older parishioner was very much part of the Easter mystery. Indeed even in the midst of illness, setbacks, and even death itself, in all times and in all places we are an Easter people. We slowly come to faith.

My question for your prayerful reflection this morning is how do you come to an Easter faith that enables you to proclaim with conviction that Jesus is the Lord and the Savior of your life? This is such an important question because if you study the Gospel stories about the resurrection, you notice that they are not primarily about what happened to Jesus, but what happened to his followers. Easter summons us to spend the rest of our lives walking away from empty tombs. The Easter readings invite us to assess where we are in the journey of faith and to continue the journey.

Going back to the first disciples, thanks be to God that God is infinitely patient with the sluggish growth of human faith. In fact, the Easter Gospels seem to pay more attention to the starts and stops of our faith life than God’s overwhelming power – until we realize that the two are intimately connected.
Through our encounters with the Risen Lord, our Easter faith deepens as it was true for the first disciples. May we be more and more aware of how the Risen Lord is present in the moments of prayer and in the relationships of our lives.

For me, a wonderful example of how the Risen Lord is present in our parish life is our Confirmation candidates. These young people will celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation with Bishop Matano this Thursday at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Pray for them. In a recent preparation session, the candidates identified their confirmation names and a bit about the saint they had chosen and why. It was a God moment, a resurrection moment for me, to listen to these young men and women speak about the qualities of service and prayer they seek to make a part of their lives.

Now don’t me wrong. I don’t think we are ready just yet to canonize our candidates for Confirmation. But this I know that God loves these candidates for exactly who they are. It is good to remember that there is no bad place to be, and no place from which it is impossible to advance further -- with the grace of God, with the grace of God. The Confirmation candidates—and we--have our whole lives to grow in faith.

The real Easter mystery is what happens when we allow ourselves to be touched by the person of Jesus. No matter how sluggish our faith life may be, no matter how disillusioned we may be by the institution of the Church, no matter if we have been judged harshly by others, the real Easter mystery is when you allow yourself to be touched by the love of the Risen Lord. The message of Easter is that Jesus seeks to fill this world—and you—with His love. Easter is God’s pledge that God’s love triumphs over poverty, conflict, violence, and war.

In the weeks ahead our Gospels continue to show us how the faith of the disciples grew following the Resurrection. They continue to show us how our faith can grow. We cannot celebrate Easter in one day, we cannot come to faith in one Mass. Together, as a community of faith, as God’s Easter people, we make the journey together over the course of a lifetime.